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.QJ'- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 




F. F. MURRAY 





A. 

iK 






■Rntered according to act of CongrCvSs in the year 1895, by 
F. F. Murray, in the cfiice of the Librarian of Congress at 
Washington, D. C. 


PREFACE. 


For whatever these pages contain which may be 
considered crude, disconnected or undignified, the writer 
has no excuse to offer ; but if anything is found in 
them suggestive of ill will, the reader is assured that 
it was not written in that spirit. On the contrary, the 
governing motive was an ambition to write something 
which might stimulate the spirit of friendly co-opera- 
tion among those who should read it — particularly 
among the people of the Pennsylvania oil regions. 


Pi,uM, Pa. 


F. F. M. 



THE MIDDLE TEN. 


JR HE informal organization, partly literary and partly 
social, which had come to bear the above name, 
was not so designated through limitation of its member- 
ship to the number indicated, — for it had several times 
that number, — but because of the trend of its sentiments 
with reference to questions of the day. It was an asso- 
ciation of people drawn together through casual dis- 
cussions and a mutual tendency toward points of com- 
mon agreement in social beliefs and theories. One of 
these points was that in considering such questions it is 
a mistake to divide mankind into simply two classes — 
The Upper Ten and The Lower Ten ; that a larger 
body than either, including all that is best in both, 
is The Middle Ten, excluding at the one extreme the 
kind of humanity classing itself as finer and more 
sacred clay solely by virtue of the size of its pocket- 
book, and at the other extreme the class seemingly 
imbued with the conviction of its having been created 


6 


THE middle ten 


especially for the purpose of sticking closely to the 
beer centres, loafing, breeding and railing at all existing 
governments and institutions. 

This great Middle Ten, as viewed by its namesake, 
embraced the brawn and sinew, the intelligence and 
genius of the world. It did all the work, made all the 
advances in mental, physical and material develop- 
ments, paid not only its own debts but the debts of all 
others as well, and carried in addition to its own respon- 
sibilities the loads it suffered to be imposed upon it 
by the two extremes. Unfortunately these extremes 
were increasing the responsibilities of The Middle Ten 
with much rapidity and at the same time were as 
rapidly decreasing the means for discharging such 
responsibilities. Behind the man earning a dollar 
lurked an increasing number of schemers, thugs and 
tramps and in front of him, grown greedier and more 
powerful with every industry wrecked and every dollar 
squeezed into their tills, stood the modern pirates of 
land and sea — the monopolies and trusts. 

Now, it was evident that with all the brawn and 
sinew and intelligence and genius indicated there was 
something wrong with the great middle division. Its 
people lived in a land of well nigh unlimited resources 
— were part of a nation in which single states were 
larger than some of the most powerful countries of the 


THK MIDDLE TEN 


7 


Old World. The inventive mind had never wrought 
such wonderful things in any age or land as their own. 
Their form of government was one in which all classes 
of men shared equally the right of suffrage. There was 
little, if anything, essential to their prosperity and hap- 
piness for which they need depend on any other land. 
Yet with all their possessions, advantages and possibili- 
ties they were as scrambling paupers compared with 
what they might be. In the midst of apparent pros- 
perity they would be plunged into failures, suspensions 
and the general woes of bankruptcy. 

The trouble was not far to seek. It was but the 
breaking out, under modern conditions, of the heritage 
of disordered blood — the old poison of individual selfish- 
ness and inconsiderateness. With a knowledge as cer- 
tain as the fact of their own existence they knew their 
life, at longest, would quickly be run ; they knew that 
all the world possesses of peace and order and common 
happiness it owes to the application of the principle of 
co-operation and enlarging mutualities — fought against 
by existing powers through all stages of human exist- 
ence from primal savagery down to their own time ; 
and yet with this knowledge at their command every 
further illustration of the wisdom of pulling together 
with the energy wasted in pulling apart they accepted 
only under protest and when forced upon them by their 


8 


THE MIDDEE TEN 


own self-pnnisliing inconsiderateness and shortsight- 
edness. 

Only once in a while would it occur to them, in 
a general way, that there was anything wrong in a 
system in which every man’s hand was raised against 
ever>^ other hand in the personal conquest of wealth, 
and which excused itself by affecting to believe, in 
effect, that, sometime — some way — every individual 
could acquire and hold a limitless number of times as 
much as ever>^ other individual without causing any 
special disturbance of the system. Sometimes the 
sweeping way in which the master spirits of selfishness 
would gather in, so to speak, ever^'thing in sight, 
including the possessions of some of the more advanced 
advocates and defenders of the system, who had worked 
well along toward the head of the general line of grab- 
bers before the shrewder ones had put in an appearance, 
would cause sporadic protests and stimulate the hunting 
for scapegoats. 

Most frequently the scapegoat selected was either the 
question of tariff or finance — as if it made any material 
difference whether the powers controlling the great 
channels of commerce and industry took in the profits 
with their right hand or with their left ; whether it 
made any permanent difference what tariff or financial 
system prevailed if the industrial and commercial 


THE MIDDEE TEN 


9 


systems remained unchanged. With charming inno- 
cence the people generally absolved themselves from all 
blame for the periodical and inevitable recoils in the 
operation of their old and much treasured system — 
floundered from one existing party to another and 
organized new ones with no better results. Hundreds 
of millions of over capitalized stock, in the hands of 
incapable imitators of the masters of inflation and con- 
traction, would suddenly collapse and vanish, and the 
people who were treasuring and making more dangerous 
the system of which such panic-causing collapses were 
but natural fruits, would despairingly view the wrecked 
banks and industries, multiplied mortgages, suicides, 
riots and a host of kindred manifestations, and then, 
blaming in var>dng degrees everybody but themselves, 
would wonder why their beautiful system of industrial 
and commercial brotherhood should suffer such painful 
and demoralizing revulsions. 

Some of them very philosophically looked upon these 
recurring collapses as visitations directed by an inscru- 
table Providence and to be borne with unquestioning 
and uncomplaining resignation — like the parental 
fatalists who inconsiderately expose their offspring to 
cold, hunger and disease, and complacently ascribe the 
speedy death of the little ones to the will of God ! 

The Middle Ten Club, in the course of its consid- 


lO 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


eration and discussion of the conditions touched by 
these comments, decided to offer prizes for the story, 
essay or poem which should best express the sentiments 
of the club and should also offer such suggestions as 
might at least draw better ones from other sources. 
The chief paper contributed, with extracts from others, 
is given in the following pages — ^accompanied by the 
wish that the reader may find something in them to 
suggest better ones along the same lines. 


THE ANTI-TRUST COMPANY. 


CHAPTER 1 . 

jpHE people of Martinville were much the same as 
those of any village of the agricultural regions of 
the Middle States. The residents of the hamlet proper 
did not number 200, all told, but there was a tributary 
population of several times that number made up of 
people who received their mail at the village, and who 
were catalogued as residents of the place by people 
similarly associated with other villages of the region. 
As a rule they were worthy people who earned their 
living by the sweat of their brow. If the pioneer spirit 
had given way largely to the spirit of self-interest, as in 
the more populous conirnunities, there still remained a 
good deal of the ancestral feeling of brotherhood. 

Their faith in humanity, and their natural disposition 
to consider other people as honest as themselves until 
proven otherwise, had often been imposed upon and 
betrayed by politicians and others of oily speech and 
pleasing manners. In many ways — in politics, business 


12 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


and various organizations — this faith in the better part 
human nature had been shaken, but it had not been 
destroyed. Their reading of political trickery and 
corruption and their own contact with such had bred to 
some extent local imitators. Thus in the population 
there was a sprinkling of those who had become 
schooled in the vice of politics — had learned to put a 
cash value on their votes and those of others, and had 
come to regard a candidate as an individual having 
money of his own or of other people to be used cor- 
ruptly, and who was therefore as legitimate a thing to 
be robbed as the nest of a hawk. 

This class was small as compared with the rest, but it 
was there and was growing. Another class was made 
up of those who had grown so disgusted with politics, 
and the seeming futility of individual effort to secure 
a fair deal either at the primaries or general elections, 
that they rarely went to the polls except in campaigns 
of special interest and enthusiasm. This class was also 
growing and party lines generally had become weak. 

But back of the poor faith in any immediate change 
in the course of political corruption and the growing 
power of monopolies and trusts, there was hope for the 
future and the spirit of a willingness to assist in any 
movement which promised a betterment of existing 
conditions. Many of such movements, in which they 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


13 


had joined, had been tried and found wanting. Parties 
had been swept into power through monumental 
majorities of approval, and had been swept out again on 
tidal waves of repudiation. All this had been to little 
purpose except to show that such efforts were insuffi- 
cient. For the monopolies and combines, against which 
these efforts were chiefly directed, there always remained 
loopholes through which they might escape and con- 
tinue their methods by the liberal use of the symbol of 
the time, the god of the age — the Almighty Dollar. 
It had become the most potent of all things and the 
manner of its acquisition was no bar to its power. 
From the poorest and most ignorant voters to scholarly 
officials in high places — through all the avenues of 
social and business intercourse, politics, legislation and 
the administration of the laws — it had become the one 
thing needful. Not a denomination was there in the 
land in which churches were not to be found where 
even the ministers toaded to it, with little regard as to 
how it had been obtained. The so-called “business” 
age had become such with a vengeance, and the spirit of 
it had crystalized into this motto : 

“ Get there — and don’t get caught at it.” 


CHAPTER 11. 


PjATURALLY there was plenty of discussion, formal 
and informal, among the villagers and their tribu- 
tary neighbors as to the cause of this state of affairs and 
its ultimate effect in the event of its failing to receive 
the application of proper remedies. In this consideration 
of existing conditions the general sentiment of the 
people was largely in favor of reform — mostly of other 
people, but with the encouraging seasoning of a willing- 
ness to take some of the blame themselves. During the 
spring, summer and early fall such discussion was 
necessarily curtailed by other matters requiring more 
immediate attention, involving the act of beating the 
sun up by a good margin and working till dark or 
later. There was no monopoly in this kind of work, 
and it took a good deal of it to afford sufficient provisions 
for winter, with enough additional to provide clothing, 
groceries, etc., and the wherewithal to meet the demands 
of the tax collectors. The work by no means ended 
with the tilling of the soil, the cultivation of the crops 
and the harvesting of the same. There was the neces- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


15 


sity for more of it — teaming, peddling, work in the 
woods and other kinds of employment which would 
help to make up the deficit so often found when the 
balance was struck in the accounts of the farm for the 
season. But the winter brought for all more unem- 
ployed hours, voluntary or enforced. There was more 
time for little gatherings of various kinds and dis- 
cussions grew accordingly. They cropped out at the 
usual village gatherings, were transferred to the literary 
and debating societies and subsequently received scatter- 
ing treatment wherever a group might form. 

Such a group, numbering half a dozen persons, was 
assembled one evening at the shoe shop of Christopher 
Hudson. The name of Hudson was not one which 
was to be found in Winks’ “ Lives of Illustrious Shoe- 
makers,” but he was a worthy individual — a worker in 
his fields in the summer, in his shop in the winter, and 
in all seasons an honest man, a student of nature and of 
books, and a modest philosopher. He was included 
with the class mentioned as having become a good deal 
disgusted with politics and elections, and when they 
came under discussion they caused him to speak with 
more spirit than on any other subject. They were in 
his mind the evening in question, and as he laid aside 
a piece of work he had completed he stepped over to 
a lounge in the room and took a position partly of 
meditation and partly of rest. 


i6 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


He was thus situated when the group already men- 
tioned came in. The conversation was soon turned to 
the subjects which Hudson had been thinking about 
before the visitors came, and presently he said : 

“We have done a good deal of theorizing in this way 
and that, a good deal of voting, and millions of other 
people have done the same thing with the same object 
in view, but the monopolies we have talked so much 
about and voted so much about keep on growing just 
the same, and the most of us, acting on the same prin- 
ciple we blame in others, keep on helping them to 
grow. I now move that we proceed to settle this 
matter on a business basis. Tet me read you some 
things I have jotted down.” 

He then went over to his bench, drew some manu- 
script from a drawer beneath and read as follows : 

“Whereas, This age has become so full of so-called 
business that there is little room in it for anything else, 
nothing in particular being thought of but the quickest 
‘ business ^ methods of getting hold of the dollar some- 
body else has earned, and 

“Whereas, This making of the dollar the chief goal 
of all human efforts and ambitions — in which we all 
have helped — has changed competition into absorp- 
tion, individuals into monopolies and monopolies into 
trusts, and 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


17 


“Whereas, These trusts are now in full control of 
the business of the country, and having in control the 
industrial and financial interests are closing in on the 
land, and 

“Whereas, Legislation seems powerless to change 
this order of things and nothing will do but to hurry 
this artificial business and monopoly idea to a speedy 
conclusion ; therefore be it 

^^Resolvedy That a company of the people be formed 
to be known as the Anti-Trust Company, its member- 
ship to be open to all citizens of the United States, 
their wives, their sons and daughters ; and be it further 

“ Resolved^ That the company proceed to acquire 
whatever may be necessary to abolish all private mon- 
opolies.” 

As Hudson concluded Philip Warner, feigning that 
the preamble and resolutions had killed him on the 
spot, fell off the bench on which he had been sitting 
and in so doing upset the tub in which Hudson soaked 
his leather. The mishap checked the spirit of his 
hilarity somewhat and he only said : 

“ Well, there’s no reasonable ground for saying 
you’ve not been liberal enough there in the ‘ whereas ’ 
line, but what’s the use in other ways of making two 
bites of a cherry ? I move to amend by striking out 
the words ‘United States’ and substituting ‘The Solar 
System.’ ” 


i8 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


“ Is that all ?” asked Hudson. “ I didn’t expect to 
get off with such a light sentence, for I am in earnest 
in what I have said and read. I mean every word of it. 
lyisten to me a little while. We can start here to-night 
a company that can grow into millions, both in member- 
ship and money, until it absorbs every monopoly in this 
country. We can bring this about peacefully and 
without doing anybody any wrong. 

“ It would be better if it could be done by the 
enforcement of the laws we now have or others that 
might be enacted. But experience has demonstrated 
that we are all too selfish — that money and monopoly 
have now too firm a grip on the laws, the law makers 
and the administration of the law, the press, the pulpit 
and hundreds of organization.s — to permit this to be 
done. The balance of the power is with the dollar and 
it must be made the medium by which to win. It 
matters not to the masters we have helped to create — 
the monopolists — of what we make an issue if in our 
growing greed and blindness we leave undisturbed the 
principle that some grades of robbei-y are more legal 
than others, and that in the name of business we may 
justify in individuals — in ourselves — the same principle 
we curse in combinations of individuals and in the 
operation of monster combines. 

“We may take a stand with either of the great parties 


I'HE MIDDLE TEN 


19 


and we will find monopolists right with us on party 
issues and liberal in their contributions to the campaign 
funds. They will encourage us in any move in the line 
of patriotism. They and their political servants will 
swing right into line, help us celebrate the Fourth, 
raise flags and deliver speeches full of patriotic — words. 
We can have all the monopoly of party or patriotism 
we want, if we let alone the trust methods of rounding 
up the dollar. People may start Christian associations, 
universities and missionary organizations, and the big- 
gest monopolists in the country will not only stand by 
them with contributions and endowments but will offer 
up seemingly soulful prayers for the success of such 
undertakings. 

“ In anything that tends toward laying up treasures 
in heaven they are with the advocates of such, but as 
for any regulation of treasures here on earth, they will 
attend to that themselves. The line is drawn at the 
dollar. There are more people in the country than 
ever before with the sentiment of fair play guiding 
them ; more of the right feeling towards others ; more 
means of enlightenment — more of all, the things which 
should mark the progress of the human mind and heart. 
But stalking right along with these things of progress 
is the tyrant of Greed, heartless and relentless — its 
appetite ever growing and unsatisfied. The veiy^ things 


20 


^HE MIDDLE TEN 


which should be used for the benefit of all it uses as 
instruments of cruelty and oppression. The things 
which should be used to lighten labor it uses to place a 
hea\der burden upon it. It fattens on calamity ; on 
“ corners ” of the necessaries of life ; on pestilence even 
and famine. Its god is the dollar, and its chief instru- 
ments now the monopolies and trusts, and the private 
possessions of rights surrendered by the public. So 
long as w^ do not touch the vital thing, the dollar, 
it can afford to encourage us in all our efforts. It is the 
old illustration of the way we work the bees. 

“ It is the use of power — in our case the power of 
monopoly — a thing created and fostered by the people 
themselves, for we have all become monopolists in 
varying degrees, as I have said, and the big ones who 
now practically control the business of the country are 
simply the ones on the top of the heap. As long as the 
system remains they will be found there, or other bigger 
ones, even more greedy, and more typical of the so- 
called business spirit of the age. I now propose that 
we go at this issue on a ‘ business ’ basis. If nothing 
will do the age but to have this monopoly idea go on — 
that in the name of business, people must either rob or 
be robbed — then let us go ahead with the formation of 
a company to be a monopoly of the people; whose 
possessions will be the common property of the com- 


THE MIDDEE ten 


21 


pany ; in which membership will be open to everybody ; 
a company which will not interfere with individual 
rights and individual industry, but will encourage and 
protect both by wiping out every monopoly in the 
country and ever>^ form of monopoly having the 
Almighty Dollar for its basis. When we have accom- 
plished this — when all the people of the country but its 
would-be financial, commercial and industrial controllers 
are members of our company and working in harmony 
with it — we may then, if the members desire, turn the 
company’s possessions over to the government, for by 
that time the company will be the government, though 
the government will not be the company, and we will 
have controlled the monopolies and trusts, and propor- 
tionately controlled ourselves, without government 
ownership in any branch of the undertaking.” 

When Hudson finished speaking his little audience 
was yet in a listening attitude. There had been some 
laughing when he began, but his spirit of earnestness 
and the novelty of his proposition had commanded their 
attention. 

“ Well,” said Warner, “ when you come to think it 
over, and get down to the bed rock facts, about the only 
thing that beats a dollar is more than a dollar, and 
that’s the meat, as I take it, of this plan Chris has been 
working on.” 


22 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


“ That’s the idea/’ said Hudson ; “ that and the idea 
of co-operation.” 

‘‘ Of course,” added Warner, “ the way times are 
some of us are not in shape to shoulder a very large 
railroad and carry it to Uncle Sam. Have we seven 
dollars in clean cash in the crowd to-night? ” 

“ Whether we have seven dollars or seven cents,” said 
Hudson, speaking to Warner as to a slightly wayward 
but well meaning boy, “does not effect the principle 
of the plan I have proposed. There was a time when 
not a monopoly of to-day existed. They all grew, 
gathering force as they grew and increasing their power 
to grow. There was a time when this country had not 
a white inhabitant ; a time when every church that 
exists to-day had not a member — not even an existence ; 
when every government that now exists was nothing. 
All things have had a beginning — all had to grow. I 
repeat that we can start here to-night a company that, 
growing slowly at first and then rapidly, can acquire 
control and ownership of every business it needs to 
acquire in order to give the people a square deal.” 

To this statement Warner banteringly responded : 

“ I don’t want to seem to be standing in the way 
of progress. Like some of the rest of you, probably, 
I came away without my pocketbook, but here’s a 
nickel I’m willing the new company should take to 
invest to suit itself and keep the change.” 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


23 


“ Very well,” replied Hudson. “ Now, suppose that 
the 80,000,000 people — at this time the population of 
the United States — in this country would agree to do 
what you have just proposed — contribute five cents each 
to the common funds of a company to which they would 
all belong. Figure for yourself what the aggregate 
amount of their contributions would be. Suppose they 
would agree to . pay ten cents a month for one year to 
such a fund. Why, at the end of that time it would 
amount to nearly one hundred millions of dollars !” 

“ It’s reasonable enough,” said Warner, “ that if 
enough people would go into a company like that, and 
would agree, they could make something move. But 
would enough of them go into it and stay by it ? That’s 
the question. If they can pull together in a company 
of that kind, why haven’t they formed one before this 
time ?” 

“Answer that question with your own experience, — 
the experience of all of us,” said Hudson. “Why have 
we not been more interested in organizations of that 
tendency ? Chiefly because we have looked upon them 
as local in their character, or as never likely to yield 
enough to go around in the matter of dividends, or as 
things concerning other sections of the country^ more 
than ours. That has been our logic, yet in spite of such 
logic we have found ourselves seeking the advancement 


24 


THE middle ten 


of self-interest in numbers — by identifying ourselves 
with organizations more or less co-operative in their 
principles. 

“ This spirit of co-operation only fails when it is 
crowded out by the very spirit that has created all the 
trusts and combines — the spirit of selfishness, and with 
it the expectation of too much in direct personal returns. 
In our company there will be no personal dividends — 
no individual division of what it possesses. All its 
interests will be possessions in common — a standing 
army of dollars and industrial and business interests, 
to be used for peace, order and fair play wherever any 
commercial disturbances occur or are attempted.” 

“And suppose,” said Warner, “such a company could 
be organized and carried as far as you would have it, — 
what then? What would the conditions be? What 
things would the company do and what would it leave 
to be done by the people individually ?” 

“ The conditions would be like this,” said Hudson, 
“ The individual would be free to follow any vocation 
he desired, so long as he followed it on the natural 
principles of honesty, thrift and economy. The 
company would in no way interfere with his rights, but 
on the contrary would protect them. Whatever the 
individual could do best, and without injustice to his 
fellow men, he would be free to do ; whatever he could 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


25 


not or would not do in this way would be done by the 
company. There would be but one monopoly and that 
would be a monopoly of the people. The rough resolu- 
tions read were just jotted down to introduce the 
subject, but I have in mind a constitution and by-laws 
I can go ahead and finish. Come around a week from 
to-night and I will submit what I have prepared. In 
the meantime talk the idea over wherever it will do the 
most good. I also move that in the meantime we con- 
sider ourselves informally organized as the Anti-Trust 
Company of the United States.’^ 

The motion was carried unanimously and soon after- 
ward the group separated for the night. 


CHAPTER III. 


T T^HEN the evening arrived for the formation of the 
new company Hudson’s shoe shop was soon 
well filled — ^so well it was evident that if the next 
meeting had a proportionate increase in attendance 
it would have to be held in larger quarters. Warner 
was the first to bring up the special subject which had 
brought them together. He said : 

“There are a good many ways of looking at this 
thing, I find. For instance, Chris made the statement 
the other night that if eighty millions of people would 
contribute ten cents a month for one year to some fund, 
it would amount to nearly one hundred millions of 
dollars at the end of that time. Well, just reverse the 
thing. Say that a company had piled up that amount 
of money, and had it to distribute monthly to its mem- 
bers, sprinkling it along through a year. You see it 
would only amount to ten cents a month in a member- 
ship of eighty millions, and it would be as much as it 
was worth to distribute it. I can’t see how the thing’s 
going to work. There won’t be enough to go ’round. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


27 


Every man who goes into the thing will expect to draw 
out more than he puts in, and that, of course, won’t 
work. Nearly every member, too, who would con- 
tribute anything to the company would expect a good 
fat job in connection with the thing, and of course there 
wouldn’t be jobs enough of that kind to go ’round — or 
jobs enough of any kind, for that matter. I have turned 
this thing over in quite a number of ways since last 
week, and I’m sorry but free to say there are too many 
ways in which such a concern is bound to bust.” 

“ Natural enough conclusions,” Said Hudson, “ if you 
look at the company in that light, but that is not the 
way to look at it. First and foremost, it is to be 
remembered, as I said the other night, no direct dividend 
is to be made to anybody — not a cent. Nobody is to 
expect anything in direct dividends, but in general bene- 
fits. It will be the same as though we contributed to a 
fund to provide means and methods for the stamping 
out of an epidemic of disease in some locality and thus 
prevent it from spreading over the country. We would 
expect no return for any contributions in that case but 
the satisfaction of helping those more afflicted than 
ourselves and at the same time preserving our own 
health — in other words, preserving the ability to earn 
other dividends. So it will be with our company — 
in wiping out a monopoly in any region it will be 


28 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


benefitting the whole country, though the first and 
direct benefits will come to the region where its grip is 
felt the most — just as in the case of the epidemic the 
benefits would come first to those most in need. As for 
everybody expecting a job, easy or otherwise, in con- 
nection with the business of our company — or monopoly 
— how is it with us now ? 

“ Are we not all making contributions — forced con- 
tributions at that — to monopolies and trusts, and do we 
expect them to give us all employment? We do not. 
Rather than employment from them what we want 
is fair play — the opportunity to be failures or successes 
according to our individual merits and not according to 
our adaptability to the uses, good, bad or indifferent, of 
some monopoly or trust. To bring this about will be 
the object of our company, for it will not check but 
stimulate individual industiy^, and will only monopolize 
for all that which is sought to be monopolized for the 
few. It would be socialistic and productive of too 
much strong government and paternalism, the objectors 
would say, if the government were to attempt to accom- 
plish this. As we can afford to be liberal we grant 
them this, and, without any connection with the gov- 
ernment, proceed to fight them with the one great 
weapon of their own — combination. The many unlaw- 
ful weapons they have used we do not need. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


29 


“ Granting them every argument they use in 
attempting to justify their methods, we will make the 
very principle on which they have been built work 
also their downfall. As a competing company, without 
any connection with the government, and simply 
carrying out one principle of the ‘ business ’ age, our 
company will proceed to beat them at their own game 
— monopolize them all. Let me now submit the out- 
line of a constitution and by-laws I have prepared.” 

Hudson then proceeded with the reading of the same, 
of which this is a summary : The company to be known, 
as already indicated, as the Anti-Trust Company and to 
be incorporated as such in every state in the union ; to 
constitute in effect a national organization, extending 
down through state, county, city, borough and township 
organizations to the members of the company — the 
people ; in case of its dissolution, from any cause what- 
soever, all its possessions to be forfeited to the govern- 
ment ; the business of the company to be done through 
executive boards ; the township, borough and city 
members to elect their respective boards ; representa- 
tives from each of these to elect the county boards ; the 
county boards in turn to elect the state boards and 
the state boards the national board ; the national 
board to hold in trust all the possessions of the 
company and to consist of one representative from 


30 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


each state, there now being no territories in the 
union ; no dividends to be paid by the company to its 
members beyond payment for services, the redemption 
of stock or Other obligations issued in raising funds, and 
such redemption to be voluntar}^ ; the local executive 
boards to select their own place of meeting ; the head- 
quarters of the county boards to be at the county seats, 
the state boards at the state capitals and the national 
board at Washington, thus providing for convenience in 
case of making a Christmas gift of the possessions of the 
company to the government. 

These were the chief points read by Hudson, and 
after some discussion it was agreed that they afforded a 
sufficient ground work of principles on which to make a 
start — that more might be added when the general for- 
mation of the company took place. 

The matter of the salary of officers moved to the 
surface in the discussion. It was correctly inferred 
it would come up promptly in connection with any 
discussion of the plan in other places and it therefore 
might be left, with other matters, to regulate itself 
in the representative general conventions which should 
be held before the company passed from the formative 
period and settled down to business. In the meantime 
there should be no salaries and the funds obtained 
by voluntary contributions should be used in the work 
of organization. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 31 

Warner now remarked that he still had that nickel 
with him — that there might be others, and that before 
any got away it might be well to organize. This 
brought comments more earnest, and directly a tempo- 
rary organization was formed by the election of an 
executive board of three for the township, one of whom 
was Hudson, who was made president of the board. 
An assessment of five cents was levied on each of the 
members of the newly formed company, — twenty in all 
— which was paid, and the fund for controlling and 
absorbing the monopolies of the country had one dollar 
to its credit for a start. There was a willingness to 
make the fund several dollars instead of one, but 
Hudson expressed the wish that it should start with the 
Alpha and Omega of the business age — the Dollar. It 
was decided to hold the next meeting two weeks thence 
at the village hall, and in the meantime each of the 
twenty members should consider himself a committee 
of one to bring in as many members as he could “ with- 
out regard to race, creed, color or previous condition of 
servitude.” The meeting then adjourned. 


CHAPTER IV. 


JHHE twenty members proceeded with due diligence 
^ to set forth to their acquaintances the aims and 
merits of the new company, so that the first formal 
meeting at the village hall brought the membership up 
to more than lOO, with the assurance of as many more 
by proxy, and the prospect that within a comparatively 
short period it would take in the whole township. No 
regular programme had been prepared for the even- 
ing, but the assemblage did not lack for those w^ho 
could execute a song or recitation, or otherwise afford 
entertainment, and the first part of the evening was 
passed in diversions of that kind — or as the reporters 
sometimes say, “an enjoyable time was had.” Then 
Hudson took charge of the meeting and briefly ex- 
plained what had been done and what it was the aim of 
the company to do. He explained that the officers 
chosen at the previous meeting w,ere elected only tem- 
porarily and might now be changed or continued until 
the membership in the company had more thoroughly 
covered the township. The latter course was adopted. 


THB MIDDLE TEN 


33 


Hudson then presented a circular he had had printed. 
After defining the purposes of the company the latter 
said : 

“ The first and main thing to be done is to enroll the 
public as members of the company. The most system- 
atic way to do this will be by election districts. You 
are therefore urged to form an organization in your 
district to be knowm as the Anti-Trust Company and 
persuade as many people as you can, and as soon as you 
can, to become members of it. Industrial and agricul- 
tural organizations of all kinds and societies of eveiy 
description are urged to take up the work of enrolling 
members in the new company and hasten it to com- 
pletion. We are sure that in a comparatively short time 
it will have a stupendous growth, as the principle of it 
passes all lines of political, social or religious distinction, 
and the successful operation of it will work no wrong to 
any man, woman or child. Moreover the individual 
expense and effort necessary to put it in operation will 
be so small as to be liardly worth mentioning. Go 
ahead witli the forming of a board and the enrolling of 
members in your district, and when these local organi- 
zations have been made all over the country the state 
and national boards will be formed and the company 
will be ready to go to work, 

“ It may be said that if the people of every election 


34 'Thk middle ten 

district in the land were formed into an anti-trust com- 
pany, and would withhold their patronage and support 
from the trusts and their servants, there ’would ]>e no 
need of going further. Temporarily that would be the 
result, but permanently it would not. The object of this 
company will be to protect us from our own selfishness 
as well as the selfishness of others. There are many 
things being done by all of us under protest — in a spirit 
of ‘ I won’t if you won’t,’ and vice versa ; there are 
thousands of lawmakers whose impulses are right, but 
who are practically forced by the spirit of the age — by 
the people themselves — into submission to the political 
machines and commercial combines ; there are thous- 
ands of editors whose hearts are in the right place who 
have been forced into silence by these combines, assisted 
by the people ; there are thousands of ministers, who, 
whatever the impressions their silence may convey, are 
smarting under more or less submission to this commer- 
cial spirit. 

“In all classes and vocations this condition is de- 
plored but is submitted to, in many cases, as a matter of 
bread and butter. Everywhere is the spirit to shake it 
off, but mixed with it is the spirit of selfishness — indi- 
vidual selfishness and a distrust that others may take 
advantage of any suppression of that selfishness. You 
must have a combination of people in which each can 


THE middle ten 


35 


feel assured that there will be no monopoly but that 
which will operate for the benefit of all, and will not 
be subject to the fluctuations of suspicion and lack of 
faith. Such will be our company. Under its operation 
the law-maker may speak for the welfare of his con- 
stituents without any fear of monopolists or political 
bosses, for his constituents will be united against such 
combines. 

“ It will be the same with the courts, the churches, the 
newspapers and every other agency that resents organ- 
ized greed but cannot shake it off. Go to work at once 
and organize a local branch of the company in your 
district. Make a start, if it is with no more than half 
a dozen members. To establish means of communi- 
cation and help along the work of organization, 
voluntary contributions are invited, to be sent to Con- 
gressman Samuel Worth, at Washington, D. C., whose 
national reputation is a sufficient guarantee that the 
funds will be properly used. The secretary of each 
branch formed is requested to send him notification of 
the fact and of the number of members enrolled. 
Write to your acquaintances and interest them in the 
work. If this address comes to you wholly or in part 
in any paper, clip it out and send it to some other paper 
with a request to have it published. In all the ways 
which may suggest themselves to you interest others in 
the work, and you will soon be surprised at the result.” 


36 the middle ten 

Though he had full faith in the success of the com- 
pany, Hudson little realized what a remarkable verifi- 
cation there was to be for the encouraging prediction 
with which the address closed. When he had finished 
reading it, and while the applause was yet m progress, 
Warner arose and said : 

“ We are all in as solid harmony now, likely, as we 
will be at any time this evening. For the good of the 
cause, therefore, I move that we now circulate the hat.” 

The motion passed as easily as a vote of confidence in 
a political boss and wire-pulling crook in a packed con- 
vention. The hat was passed and gathered eleven 
dollars. 

‘‘ We have here to-night,” said Warner, rising again, 
“some from each part of the township and I suggest it 
would be a good plan to get up a little oyster supper or 
something in each town, the proceeds to be turned over 
to the treasurer of the new company. The sleighing is 
good now and the boys and girls generally are in the 
right trim for winter circulation. Let us therefore 
make hay while the snow shines — or words to that 
effect.” 

This suggestion was received with favor and it was 
decided that arrangements should be made for holding 
such a gathering at each village in the township, if the 
weather continued in hariiioiiy with the company. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


37 

Hudson then distributed copies of the printed address 
or circular, to be sent by different members of the com- 
pany to various newspapers, retaining some to be 
similarly used by himself. It was agreed that as soon 
as the condition of the company’s funds would provide 
for it a large number of copies of the circular should 
be printed and sent to as many newspapers throughout 
the country as would be likely to print it or make 
extracts from it. As the chief business of the local 
branch was now to add to its membership, it was 
decided that the next meeting need not be held until 
a month later and that each member, as before, should 
be a committee of one to add new members, either in 
person or by bringing in their names. It was believed 
that by a little effort practically all the residents of the 
township could be brought into membership by that 
time and there would be no occasion for furtiier general 
meetings, as the local board could then take charge 
of the affairs of the township company, meeting from 
time to time like the township supervisors ; its meet- 
ings, however, to be open to all members of the 
company. When the Anti-Trust Company adjourned 
that evening it had a membership of no, with eleven 
dollars in the treasury. As the use of the hall for the 
evening had been donated, the expenses thus far had 
been nothing. 


CHAPTER V. 


HE next morning dozens of copies of the circular 



^ were headed for as many newspaper offices and 
personal letters were on the way to points where they 
would do the most good. This individual writing was 
carried on for a few days, and then the executive board 
got together and authorized Hudson to have another 
supply of the circulars printed. Then an apportion- 
ment of the states was made among the members of the 
executive board and a number of other members of the 
company, and in a short time the fund, with additional 
personal contributions, had been used in sending the 
circular to newspapers and to secretaries of various 
bodies, industrial, agricultural, co-operative and social, 
lists being preserved of the ones addressed. In the 
meantime the letters sent out were already bearing 


fruit. 


Marked copies of papers, letters and cards, with 
varied suggestions, approvals and inquiries, were coming 
in to Hudson, to members of the board and others who 


THE MIDDEE TEN 


39 

had been sending out the circular and personal letters. 
It had been at Hudson’s suggestion that reports of 
organization and contributions were sent to Con- 
gressman Worth instead of himself. The wisdom of 
this course was soon shown. It was evident that if the 
returns were going to Worth in the increased propor- 
tions to be expected from the number locally received, 
they were accumulating in good shape. They were not 
to be left long in doubt on this point. In due time the 
following letter was received from Washington : 

“ My Dear Sir : 

“Two weeks ago I received a letter from an Ohio 
man saying he enclosed a dollar for the good of the 
cause and he did not doubt that a good sized organiza- 
tion would soon be reported from that immediate region. 
By the same mail came a card from a Pennsylvania city 
saying, ‘ loo members in our part of town and only 
fairly started.’ I was at a loss to know what was 
meant until I received, that same afternoon, a marked 
paper containing a copy of your circular letter. My 
first impulse was to be provoked that I thus should be 
made practically sponsor for something I had given no 
consideration and as to which I had not even been con- 
sulted. I was so disposed to write to you ; but as I 
read over the plan again that feeling was dispelled. I 


40 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


now write to say that I am in full sympathy with the 
project and willing to aid it in any way in my power. 
I have delayed writing until now in order that I might 
return the compliment in the matter of surprises^ for 
sanguine as you may have been in starting the circular 
on its journey, you hardly could have expected that 
within so short a time it would create such a tide of 
correspondence as is now flowing in upon me with 
daily increasing volume. I can not undertake to form 
a bureau to give it even temporarily the attention it 
would be accorded if the company were in actual 
operation. The most I can agree to do is this : To let 
it pile up a few weeks longer and then employ a force 
of clerks to go through it with me ; ascertain the names 
of the secretaries of local branches formed ; notify them 
to proceed on a certain date, with what representatives 
they have, to form the county, state and national boards, 
and when the national board has been formed, turn over 
to it the correspondence and contributions then accum- 
ulated. To wait until tlie whole country had been 
organized locally before proceeding to form the general 
organization would be to bury me under millions of 
unanswered and unopened communications. I. have 
the pleasure to close with the prediction that within six 
months the state and national boards will be in practical 
operation, and that through them the enrolling of 


THE MIDDEE ten 


41 


members in the unorganized regions will soon be carried 
to completion. 

Yours very truly, 

“ Samuel Worth.” 

Hudson was naturally very much delighted with this 
letter, and after reading it himself at the postoflice also 
read it to those who were present. For the information 
and encouragement of the patrons of the office in 
general, nearly all of whom were now members of the 
company, he tacked its type-written pages consecutively 
on the inside of the postoffice door, v/here they might 
serve temporarily as a bulletin to be read by all. 

In point of membership, the Anti-Trust Company was 
flourishing around Marti nville in regular green bay tree 
style. The suppers and entertainments had been given 
in the different villages with gratifying results, and the 
time was at hand for the general meeting arranged for 
the month prevdous. The developments of the meeting 
were not needed, however, to demonstrate that member- 
ship in the company had been making booming pro- 
gress, and when, in the course of the meeting, it was 
announced that the membership of the company was 
represented in every family in the township, there was 
no occasion for surprise, though a hearty expression of 
applause was in order. For the benefit of those who 


42 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


had not already become familiar with its contents, Hud- 
son read the letter from Worth, and supplemented it by 
reading some of the miscellaneous messages of approval 
and encouragement receh^d by himself and by others. 

By a unanimous vote the executive board already 
elected was continued — the local affairs of the com- 
pany were entrusted to its hands, and it was agreed that 
until better means of communication should be estab- 
lished any information of special interest should be 
disseminated by the board in the form of notices to be 
posted at each of the postoffices in the township. It 
was noticeable that some of the papers had already 
begun to cull from their correspondence and dispatches 
items relating to the company, and to use them, with 
comments and clippings, in special departments. It was 
correctly judged that the lines would soon develop as 
between the papers in sympathy wdth the aims of the 
company and those in the service of corporations and 
relying on monopoly to carry' them through. Relevant 
to this subject Warner arose and said : 

“ I notice that three papers I take, and that I know a 
good many of the rest of you take, not only didn’t print 
our letter or any portion of it but took the trouble 
to guy us and say that on this matter of monopoly our 
heads are full of wheels. But I notice, just the same, 
that they don’t object to taking ‘wheels’ of another 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


43 


kind out of our pockets. Well, they get no more out of 
mine. I’ve sent them word that I have no further use 
for their papers, and have subscribed for a couple that 
have given us a show and put in a good word for us. I 
hope that ever^^body here to-night — everybody in the 
township — will do the same thing.” 

Warner’s remarks were heartily approved and a 
number of people arose to say 'they had decided on the 
same course and for the same causes. Hudson then 
spoke at some length on the subject. He said that the 
sentiment expressed was in line with the argument he 
had often offered before — that the only way to insure an 
independent press was to patronize and sustain it, 
regardless of the inducements held out by the organs of 
monopolists and political bosses. He said that for the 
wrecks of independent papers that strew the paths of 
journalism the people themsehes, more tlian any other 
agency, had been directly responsible ; that men who 
had given the best energies and the best years of their 
life in fighting for independence and common fair play 
had been deserted, betrayed and forced into insolvency 
or silence by the very" people who should have been the 
strongest and longest to uphold them. 

After this meeting, as after the previous one, letters 
were started for various newspaper offices, but they were 
of a different character. When their instructions had 


44 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


been carried out there would be fewer papers of monop- 
olists and politicians coming into the township and 
more of the other kind. 

The proceeds secured from the several suppers and 
entertaimnents made a substantial showing. The 
original purpose to use it for stationery and pastage in 
the sending out of the circular letter was abandoned 
for the reason, as indicated by the letter from Worth 
and other letters received, that it could not be told with 
much definiteness to what places it would be best to 
send them. It was plain enough that increasing cor- 
respondence was going on, and that if a letter were sent 
to any point there was no assurance that it would not 
find itself preceded by others of the same kind — per- 
haps find a branch already organized. It was accord- 
ingly decided that the correspondence would be directed 
only to points where it was known no organization had 
been effected, and that further work would be deferred 
until the notice should come from headquarters to 
proceed with the work of general organization. It had 
now come to be an unusual thing to pick up a paper 
that did not contain something — good, bad or indifferent 
— about the Anti-Trust Company ; all of which served 
to boom the general agitation and bring nearer the 
date when the notice for general organization should be 
issued. 


CHAPTER VI. 


OURING the two weeks following there was no need 
^ of local meetings and little call for the posting of 
notices to provide the public with news of interest with 
reference to the developments of the Anti-Trust Company. 
The papers were full of it — full of praise and encourage- 
ment, abuse and belittlement It was cropping out in 
all kinds of associations ; many men of prominence were 
already among its advocates and the number of them 
was increasing. The fences, figuratively speaking, were 
already studded with politicians and others cautiously 
elevating dampened fingers into the air and preparing 
to set their sails accordingly. Badges, buttons, topical 
songs and other things illustrative of agitation of public 
sentiment were largely in evidence. It was therefore 
not surprising to Hudson, though none the less gratify- 
ing, to receive the follo^ving letter from Worth : 

“ My Dear Sir : 

“Within a couple of weeks we expect to begin 
the work of sending out the notices for general organi- 
zation. The correspondence received, the bulk of which 


46 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


has not been opened yet, is immense. This fact now 
seems to be assured : Even though the interest at 
present displayed in the company should prove like that 
which attends the reign of various ‘ fads and after a 
few months should then die out largely, success would 
nevertheless be assured, for even before the novelty of 
the movement wears away the people will have con- 
tributed enough to perpetuate and to hold them together 
afterward. 

“ The interest is continuously growing and has not 
yet reached its best agitation period. As soon as it 
seems to liave reached that period (the general organiza- 
tion having been formed in the meantime) a day can be 
set to be known throughout the country as Contribution 
Day, when by individual contributions and entertain- 
ments of various kinds, the local organizations every’- 
where will proceed to raise funds for the national 
treasury of the company. The scoffers may call it a fad, 
a craze or what they will, but the result will be an 
enormous fund — larger than that now possessed by quite 
a number of monopolies, and sufficient to give the com- 
pany a great start in its work. I send you by this mail 
some letters which doubtless will be of special interest to 
you, coming as some of them do from your part of the 
-country, though tliey are not more striking than scores 
I have read from other sections, and of which there 


THE MIDDEE TEN 47 

undoubtedly are thousands among those yet to be 
opened. 

Yours very" truly, 

“Samuel Worth.” 

The letters referred to were similar to many already 
received by Hudson in approval of the circular with 
which his name had been associated ; but among the 
ones forwarded by Worth were several in which he 
took particular interest, being somewhat familiar with 
the conditions which prompted them. One of them 
read as follows : 

“In considering myself initiated in the Anti-Trust 
Company by the little fee enclosed, I recall the fact that 
our little market town was once known as the Queen 
City of these regions — a pretty place and with business 
and competing industries enough to sustain its popu- 
lation and afford a market for the tributary country. 
It is now known as the site of ruins of natural 
industries, oil and otherwise, — a place where the few 
remaining ordinary old-timers admonish the young to 
pause not on the order of their going. Time was when 
the people of the place, by co-operation, independent 
voting and development of independent industries 
natural to the regions, might have made it a perma- 
nently prosperous city. But they didn’t. They stood 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


48 

in the way of their own prosperity. The population 
was made up of three classes — the good, the bad and 
the ones sometimes described as too mean to live and not 
good enough to die. Naturally each class had a good 
deal of scorn for the ways of the others ; but on one 
point they were practically a unit — that is to say, on 
their standard of political action. 

“ They had seen their chief natural industries 
wrecked and scattered by monopolies whose candidates 
they had helped to elect again and again, and the ver>^ 
school children could have figured out for them that 
if the total appropriations of the state should be turned 
to that one region, it would take years to make good 
even what the people had permitted to be taken from 
them in the ruination of these industries and the check- 
ing of the development of othei:s. And yet, when 
election day came, the people would invariably form 
the old unit — the very nice people along with the 
plain bums — in endorsement of that sort of robber}^, 
justifying their actions by the hope of bringing back a 
portion of their confiscated advantages — not from the 
outside corporations which would neither have works of 
their own in the place nor permit others to do so, but in 
the form of assessments levied on the people of the 
state — some appropriation or state institution. 

“ Furthermore there were local servants of these cor- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 49 

porations on good pay who did the ordinary work of 
spies, and others who had graduated from that service — 
who had betrayed and sold to the opposition well mean- 
ing people who had trusted them. In their eagerness to 
be of service to such leaders, both at the polls and 
elsewhere, the people generally fairly fell over each 
other until their vocations were gone, and the place 
became simply a residence town for those in shape 
to object successfully to having the noise and smoke of 
any industrial establishments in the region. 

“ If asylums or other state institutions could be 
located around the outskirts of the city, they had no 
objections to offer, but on the contrary were in favor of 
them. The industrial and common business classes 
kept on following this foolish programme — destroying 
natural resources and industries — and praying, voting 
and wire-pulling for more asylums, hospitals and inter- 
state soup houses, until practically nothing remained 
for them to do but to sprinkle and mow lawns in the 
summer, rake leaves in the fall, shovel snow in the 
winter and help the ice go out in the spring. Then, as 
fast as they could acquire enough to get out of the place 
with their families, they began to scatter, and kept on 
scattering until the town became what it is to-day. 
Good luck to the new company.” 


50 


THE middle ten 


The following letter came from a clergyman : 

“ Most willingly I contribute the enclosed mite and 
ask to be enrolled as a member of the company. The 
world, with all its advancement, has not yet become 
unselfish enough to appreciate that dollars are cheaper 
instruments of experiment than human lives. Looking 
back through the ages upon the awful panorama of 
slaughter and gore, it has not yet departed from the 
belief that the steps of Progress, to be genuine, must be 
stained with human blood, and that now as in the past, 
among so-called civilized as well as uncivilized nations, 
brute force must be considered the final arbiter. No 
better — or worse — proof of this is needed than the spec- 
tacle to be seen to-day of all the nations of the world 
fairly armed to the teeth. Think for a moment what a 
mighty fund for conquests of peace the new company 
would have if it could receive for one year an amount 
equal to that expended in maintaining the armies of the 
world. 

“Think, too, how enormous the fund would be if 
it simply represented the amount involved annually 
in labor troubles — lost wages, lost profits, lost property 
and expense to the state ! 

“And let me say here that- I consider as not less 
important and desirable than the restraint of organized 


THE middle ten 


51 


and unorganized greed, the ultimate prospect that the 
proposed company will be able to draw the line dis- 
tinctly between honest laboring men and their 
advocates, and the shiftless, vicious classes and the 
demagogues who appeal to their prejudices and passions. 
In the complete operation of such a company, as I look 
at it, these common loafers would have to go to work 
along with the more polished but not less dangerous 
loafers who live on the industry of others. In conclu- 
sion permit me to say that while the churches must 
bear to some extent the stigma of having become 
commercialized, and that many ministers command 
large salaries by reason of their willingness to harmon- 
ize the gospel with the comfortable views of those who 
are willing and able to pay handsomely for that kind of 
service — admitting this much, let the fact be not 
forgotten that, leaving out such exceptions, the com- 
mercial rewards of the ministry are poor — too poor to 
meet the needs of common charity.” 

Another letter contained this paragraph : 

“ It is a fitting thing that a movement like this should' 
have its origin in the country rather than in the indus- 
trial centres, though it more directly concerns the latter. 
Not until they grew into closer union could either have 
the right measure of prosperity. They need to become 


52 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


better acquainted with each other. They need to learn 
that the line between them does not simply fence off 
so-called ‘ hayseeds ’ and victims for swindlers, on the 
one hand, and bummers and dudes on the other. The 
townsman needs to pare down the idea that the country- 
man’s special mission in this vale of tears is to raise 
produce and metropolitan mirth and scorn, and the 
countryman, in turn, needs to disabuse his mind of the 
notion that his brother in town was created for the pur- 
pose of paying four prices for butter too rank to be used 
for axle grease. They have a common lesson to learn. 
With reference to the projected company this much we 
may all know of its result in advance : It will be a 
good thing, and every dollar put into it will be well 
invested. If it should fail, it would be well worth 
whatever efforts or money it represented to learn its 
weak spots, — the causes of its failure, — and then, with 
the defects remedied, go ahead on the basis warranted by 
the experience thus gained.” 

A letter from an Ohio farmer was as follows : 

“ I’m in for the new company with what little I can 
spare to help it along. You notice that it never does 
for us farmers to have any strikes ; but we’re not for- 
gotten when it comes to footing the bills for strikes 
among others, to say nothing of the chances our boys 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


53 


take of having their heads cracked in acting the part of 
peacemakers and separating fighting capital and labor. 
Now, if we’ve got to turn out every little while to run 
railroads, coal mines and other things for the fellows 
who owm them — and we had to do that last year in 
eleven states — it strikes me that we might as well form 
a partnership with the workingmen, either as a com- 
pany or in connection with the government, and run 
these things ourselves and be done with it. So I say 
I’m in for the Anti-Trust Company.” 

The following letter was not signed, but it might 
be readily inferred that it came from someone who 
could substantiate what Hudson had said about inde- 
pendent newspapers and the processes of destroying 
them. The writer said : 

“ I have just read the call for members and con- 
tributions for the new couipany, and make haste to 
respond with a contribution — one of the kind my 
friend, the British Sovereign, sends to subjects in dis- 
tress — that is to say, I send you a message of condo- 
lence. Later I might give the company a lift in the 
form of a resolution of respect, but not at present. 
If this seems cold to you, I have this to add in the way 
of a thaw : 

“ I am now editing a small but fairly profitable piece 


54 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


of land with a good hennery attached, and I will agree 
to make you a present of the whole outfit as soon as you 
can furnish reasonable proof that you have 500 or more 
people working together unselfishly and unsuspiciously 
in a business company, having a common foe for its 
enemy and the common good of all for its object. You 
may get that number or many times that number, to 
work on sentimental, military, religious and other lines, 
but on business lines — never. The bumps of suspicion, 
envy and greediness will very shortly stand out so 
plainly on members of such a company that he who 
runs may not miss them ; and I here want to make the 
friendly suggestion that if you establish a paper in con- 
nection with the company, the line, ‘ We have come to 
stay,’ be dropped from the introductory announcement. 

“ As a farmer, using plain, homely terms, I cite the 
fact that in a herd of swine, each member thereof 
having the freedom to act the hog as much it can, there 
are bound to be large hogs, smaller hogs and runts, and 
that no process of driving away the larger swine 
from time to time will leave the remainder of the herd 
without some representatives greedier and more capable 
than the rest of getting their feet into the trough. No 
process of driving away swine would cltange that con- 
dition. If you could drive away the swinishness that 
would change it, and that alone. So I contend that the 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


55 

doctrine, that genuine and progressive human liberty 
involves the freedom for every man to be as greedy as 
he can, is bound to develop abnormal illustrations of 
that greed, and that, if the greed itself can not be 
removed, the removal of such illustrations amounts to 
nothing permanent. 

“ It was said of old that devils cast out of man took 
possession of a herd of swine, and that the dumb brutes, 
ashamed of such tenants or otherwise impelled, rushed 
headlong into the sea. Well, if devils of swinishness 
were not in turn cast into man was it because people 
already possessed, as they still possess, a practical sub- 
stitute in the spirit of greed and selfishness — which to 
this day they desire should be cast out of others, but 
which, in their own case, they feel may be safely left to 
their individual judgment and temperate control ? 

‘^Another point against your company: It contem- 
plates the idea that in its operation the people in 
general will voluntarily work for the good of others as 
well as for themselves. Now, by what process, except 
force, do you expect to cause people to help others who 
will not even help themselves — people so lazy they con- 
sider it the next thing to an intrusion and injustice on 
the part of Nature that the sun compels them either 
to sweat or put themselves to the exertion of moving 
around into the shade? Why, bless you, there are 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


56 

people right here too lazy to set a hen, too shiftless 
to build a chicken coop, who consider me a kind of 
poultry monopolist for tr>dng to operate a modest in- 
cubator in connection with my hennery. 

“No, your company won’t work. It takes a scope too 
broad and generous at the start. If you put it on the 
basis that, standing between the extreme of shiftless 
wallowing on the one hand and that of overgrown greed 
on the other, it will protect itself from both while ex- 
perimenting on itself with a view to diminishing the 
number of graduates to such extremes in the future, — 
then I am with you for my individual share in the 
general experiment. In the meantime pardon me for 
repeating the suggestion already offered — that if you 
establish an organ it will be the part of discretion not 
to use that line, ‘ We have come to stay.’ ” 

It will be seen that the writer hardly could have 
offered better arguments in favor of the new company 
than in the foregoing letter, and that he could not have 
received more than condensed extracts from the circular 
address, inasmuch as the company defined at the close 
of his letter as a good one to form was exactly such 
a one as contemplated in the plan of the Anti-Trust 
Company. He therefore could be counted as a future 
member of the company. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


57 


From another town came a letter in part as follows: 

“ Extensive membership in the company can not 
be expected here openly at present, but the sentiments 
of the people are all right, and it is safe to predict that 
there is no town of the size in the country that will 
eventually have more members than this in the com- 
pany. It used to be known as the Hub of these 
regions. It is now known as a town owned by a 
monopoly whose very name it were the next thing 
to treason to use here. Even the employes do not use 
it but substitute various noni de plumes less associated 
with wreckage and plunder. Nor does the monopoly 
itself do business under its own name. On none of 
its variously named establishments does it place that 
name. It is a thing to be used only in a whisper, and 
to pull it from the sacred precincts of silence in an 
abrupt manner means to startle as many associations 
and combinatians as are revealed in jerking a fish-hook 
out of a full box. 

“ Who brought about this state of things ? Chiefly 
the people themselves. Their logic was, in encouraging 
a branch concentration of the monopoly’s interests here, 
that this was as proper a place as any if a point were 
needed where any considerable instalments of legal 
tender, collected at other points, should be distributed. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


58 

Whether any of this legal tender, in its transition to 
this point, should come through questionable processes, 
was an outside and far-fetched consideration. A dollar 
was a dollar — it might be in the pocket of a rascal one 
day, a minister the next and in the day dream of a 
country editor the next. The source of the dollar was 
therefore an out-of-the-way sentiment — the dollar itself 
was the thing. 

“ And so, like a town bidding tens of thousands of 
dollars for the location and patronage of a prize fight, 
while neglecting legitimate industries, our good people 
bid for this monopoly by helping to destroy home 
concerns. People who raised their voices against the 
combine and its methods, and in favor of independence 
and the free development of the natural resources of the 
region, were termed chronic kickers and blocks in the 
way of the progress of the town. In consequence 
monopoly came and independence went. 

“ And what was the result ? Did the business of the 
monopoly bring money into the town ? It did. With 
the profits it secured through railroad discriminations, 
the confiscation of property by depression, and extor- 
tionate charges where the people had helped it to kill 
competition, did it not pay good wages to its local 
employes? It did. Have not its employes, like its 
carriage horses, the opportunity to be well housed and 
well fed ? They have. Then why do they kick ? 


THE middle ten 


59 


“ It is because they must be as dumb as the horses in 
the matter of expressing any views that do not harmon- 
ize with the methods of the monopoly — and such views, 
they find are many. They must either keep mum, lose 
their jobs, their patronage or get out of the town. As 
for voting — well, no congressman or member of the 
legislature is elected from this region who dares, on the 
stump, in print or otherwise, to open his mouth against 
the combine. It has been a lesson to the people. They 
have learned that there is more of the American spirit 
of freedom — more healthy and lasting prosperity — in a 
town maintained by many small industries than in one 
where a single concern, in which the people have no 
voice, controls practically the whole business and con- 
sequently the town. 

“ They have tied their own hands here in this 
respect, but will be found willing to be untied, and for 
that reason you may be assured that the new company 
will eventually have the right kind of a membership in 
this city.” 

Hudson was familiar enough with the localities de- 
scribed in some of these letters to know that the writers 
had confined themselves to facts and that all might have 
gone more into detail in the same vein if they had been 
so disposed. 


CHAPTER VIL 


T N due time the notice came from headquarters fixing 
^ the dates for county, state and national organization. 
Each district elected an executive board and a represen- 
tative to take part in the election of the board of the 
next higher organization. At each district election ex- 
pressions were had as to the compensation of officers and 
their duties ; methods of raising funds ; what monopoly 
should first be fought, — these and many other questions 
were discussed and resolutions drawn up embodying 
in substance the ideas thus expressed. These were 
in turn discussed in the county conventions, boiled 
down and passed on to the state conventions, to be 
further solidified and sent to the national executive 
board, which body was authorized to draw up a con- 
stitution and by-laws to be submitted to the people 
for adoption. The general organization was thus 
formed. As was to be expected there were thousands 
of election districts in the country where no local board 
had yet been organized, but the general membership was 
great in its proportions, representing every state in the 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


6l 


union and nearly every county, tliough it had been less 
than six months since Hudson first broached the plan. 
The contributions which had been sent to Worth al- 
ready amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and 
they represented, not any combined effort to raise funds, 
but simply individual and voluntary contributions. 

There was every prospect that within a short time 
more than half the population of the country would 
be enrolled under the banner of the Anti-Trust Com- 
pany and there was the further cheering prospect that 
when a date should be fixed to be regarded throughout 
the country as Contribution Day, and that number of 
people should set to work with the common purpose of 
raising funds for the company, the result would be a 
great financial start for the new enterprise. In the 
transaction of the business of the national executive 
board each member had charge of the correspondence 
of his respective state, represented its general interests 
on the board, and through the organizations below 
directed the completion of organization in his state. 

In the meantime it was understood that voluntary 
contributions were acceptable from any source, and 
they came in liberally. The work was pushed along 
until every election district in the country had an 
organization — necessarily small in many cases but in 
others covering all possible membership in the district. 


62 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


Then came the adoption of the constitution and by-laws 
and provisions for incorporation. These provisions 
arranged for a general incorporation, with specified 
objects in each state. As the development of the 
business necessitated the including of other objects it 
could be effected by the formation of minor companies 
within the company, just as the Standard Oil monopoly, 
from time to time, organizes various oil and gas com- 
panies . under various names, filling in the names of 
some of its lawyers or other employes as incorporators. 

Next came Contribution Day. The people of Mar- 
tinville, of the other hamlets of the township, and 
of the township in general, set to work, like their 
fellow members of the company throughout the country 
to raise funds. The evening of Contribution Day, both 
in city and country, was devoted to benefit entertain- 
ments of all kinds. The one held at Martinville, like 
most of the others, was of a musical and literary 
character. The programme included a twenty-minute 
address of special interest from Hudson, who took for 
his subject these lines from John Boyle O’Reilly’s poem, 
“ The City Streets 

“ God pity them all ! God pity the worst, 

For the worst are reckless and need it most ; 

When we trace the causes why lives are curst 
With a criminal taint, let no man boast. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


63 


The race is not run with an equal chance — 

The poor man’s son carries double weight ; 

Who have not, are tempted ; inheritance 
Is a blight or blessing of man’s estate. 

No matter that poor men sometimes sweep 
The prize from the sons of the millionaire — 

What is good to win must be good to keep, 

Else the virtue dies on the topmost stair. 

Come back to the light, for my brain goes wrong 
When I see the sorrows that can’t be cured ; 

If this is all righteous, then why prolong 
The pain for a thing that must be endured ? 

The earth was not made for its people — that cry 
Has been hounded down as a social crime ; 

The meaning of life is to barter and buy 
And the hardest and shrewdest are masters of time. 

We have churches enough and they do their best, 

But there’s little of Christ in our week day laws ; 

The gospel is taught but the gain is test — 

We punish the sin while we cherish the cause. 

Not gold but souls should be first in the age 
That bows its head at the Sacred Word ; 

But our laws are blind to a starving wage. 

While guarding the owner’s sweat-wrung hoard. 

^ It is not our fault,’ say the rich ones. No 
’Tis the fault of a system old and strong. 

But men are the judges of systems ; so 
The cure will come if we own the wrong. 

It will come in peace, if the right men lead — 

It will sweep in storm if it be denied ; 

The law to bring justice is always decreed. 

And on every hand are the warnings cried.” 


64 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


Using these appropriate lines for his subject Hudson 
painted a rosy picture of social changes to be effected 
in the future, and the movement represented in the 
Anti-Trust Company was to be an important step in the 
direction of bringing them about. It was not to be 
expected that the operation of the company would 
transform into such beings as they ought to be the 
handicapped creatures of the world, coming either from 
hovels or palaces. 

But a good deal that passes for selfishness, he said, is 
a spirit of self-protection, forced now through the 
necessities of the so-called business age into individual 
and collective acts which form in the aggregate the 
chief cause of the industrial and commercial troubles of 
the country. He argued that this spirit of self protec- 
tion could healthfully exist and along with it the spirit 
of common brotherhood. It was so in the case of the 
old pioneers, and it could and should be so to-day. 

There was no need of martyrs in working toward 
such a condition, and there was no sense in waiting 
until by some wonderful transformation all humanity 
had become perfect before expecting any further pro- 
gress in that direction. Because people were all selfish 
in some degree it did not follow that all must become 
perfect before they would have the right to refuse to be 
martyrs to that selfishness. “The people who foruied 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


65 

this republic,” he said, “did not, and could not wait for 
perfection in themselves before they formed it. They 
simply shook off what they agreed had become most 
obnoxious, and trusted to themselves and future genera- 
tions to shake off whatever should develop to be 
such in the future. In throwing off monarchy they 
retained negro slavery ; but the time came when they 
recognized that that, too, was obnoxious and they shook 
it off. And now, not in war but in peace, they proceed 
to deal with the question of industrial and commercial 
slavery, with its attendant issues of private appropria- 
tion of public rights, financial juggler}^, fictitious stocks 
and artificial business. There is no need that any man 
should become a pessimist and paint gloomy pictures of 
the future. There is no natural want without some- 
thing in nature to meet it. There is no natural human 
need, individual or collective, that cannot be supplied. 

“ The people will go on in the future, as in the past, 
throwing off forms of oppression of their own creation 
and profiting in some measure from every lesson until a 
new civilization will develop, in which ambition and 
competition will find scope not simply in the sustenance 
of self, but in contributing to the common sum of 
enlightenment and prosperity. With this development 
— with these thoughts and aims growing in the minds 
of the people — children with healthier bodies and 


66 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


better brains will come into the world. Each gen- 
eration will be an improvement on its predecessor, and 
humanity, needing not to wait for another life to enjoy 
the blessings of existence, will move onward and up- 
ward in the path of progress.” 

Another portion of the programme was a paper by 
Warner, much different from the earnest address by 
Hudson, The paper described a plan he had in mind 
for giving a series of charity entertainments for such 
kings of finance, monopoly politicians, writers and 
clergymen as should be thrown out of their present 
jobs, and perhaps go on a strike here and there, when 
the new company got under headway. 

The programme in other respects was a good one and 
what was more to the point, the receipts were of satis- 
factory proportions. The next day they were sent, with 
the funds previously raised, to the national treasury of 
the company at V/ashington. From all election dis- 
tricts where local organizations existed — and they now 
existed in a large majority of all the districts — ^the 
funds thus collected poured into the national treasury. 
The result was, so to speak, “ Millions for defense but 
not a cent for tribute.” Worth’s prophecy had already 
come true — even while tlie movement was yet a novelty 
the people had contributed enough, rightly used, to 
destroy several good sized monopolies and to gather 
power in doing so to destroy others. 


CHAPTER VIIL 


n S previously explained, one of the matters of pro- 
^ gressive consideration, from the local organiza- 
tions up to the national board, had been as to what 
monopoly should first be made to feel the power of the 
people. The conclusion of the national board on this 
question was therefore readily reached, and was to the 
point that inasmuch as the Standard Oil Trust had 
begotten a greater brood of trusts than any other it 
should be the first one to be called to account, and 
be treated to some of the same medicine. It possessed, 
as it had for years, control of the whole oil business 
of the country, and it was smooth sailing now for the 
great combine. 

Time was when it had more to do to maintain its 
supremacy — when independent competition, actual and 
prospective, put it to a good deal of trouble in shifting 
and manipulating its screws on producers, refiners, trans- 
porters and consumers. It now had the refineries and 
independent lines frozen out of business, and could 
apply the aforesaid screws to the producers and con- 
sumers at its own sweet will. 


68 


THE MIDDEE ten 


It is true that here and there an independent refinery 
could be found, but such existed only by the grace of 
the big monopoly, and did simply a gleaning business. 
It was as if a rich farmer, when his hay crop had 
been gathered, might permit some poor fellow to mow 
the grass in the fence corners, or reap with his sickle, 
around the occasional stump and stone pile, the strag- 
gling stalks of grain which the large harvesting 
machinery did not reach. Such was the independent 
refiner at this time. The producer, who had been the 
last to be benefitted in the Standard’s programme, in 
advancing the price of crude and keeping down the 
price of refined, thus to force the independent lines and 
refineries to the wall, was now at the mercy of his 
master. While this process of squeezing his fellow 
independents was going on he received a fair price 
for his oil — a price there had been none but monopoly 
reasons for withholding from him for a long period 
before. As the price of oil advanced, the papers in 
general, led by the Standard organs, grew more bullish 
in their reports. The daily consumption was greater 
than the production. The stocks were decreasing 
rapidly. The conditions as they were made to appear 
were such as to create the belief in the mind- of the 
producer that he was now a necessity ; that his product 
was bringing a better price in spite of the monopoly, 


THE middle ten 


69 

and that although the independent lines and refineries 
might be forced to go under, he was in a position to be 
unaffected. 

He had no need now of refineries or lines. He had 
oil — oil that the world must have, and it must come to 
him and pay him his price for it. What occasion had 
he now to concern himself about the Standard ? It, too, 
must come to him and deal with him on his own terms, 
for the statistical proofs showed him to be master of 
the situation. Foolish man ! 

Time passed and the independent refiners were forced 
out of business. The independent lines in which the 
Standard, step by step, had been securing stock, went 
the way of the Tidewater and others. Soon afterward 
a change came over the spirit of the producer’s dream. 
The reports, guided by the Standard papers, grew more 
bearish. Every day it was being demonstrated that 
there was more oil in the country than had been 
thought of by Horatio or anybody else — lots of it 
untapped in New York ; lots of it in Colorado, Wyom- 
ing, California, the Southern States and here and there 
throughout the country in general. All that was 
required was development. Of course the price of 
crude went down. 

Soon the Standard papers resumed the publication of 
their stock articles as to the probable or possible ruin- 


70 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


ation of the Pacific coast markets by the petroleum 
of Peru, and other oil fields showing development in 
that part of the world. The price of crude naturally 
went down some more. Then the beacon lights of the 
Standard organs were turned once more in the direction 
of favorite and never failing resort, and lo and behold ! 
there it was looming along again — the same old tidal 
wave of Russian petroleum which had so often served 
before as a pretext for depressing the price of crude — 
which now went down again. 

And thus, with the independent lines and refiners out 
of the way and competition killed, the producer was 
obliged to sell his product for whatever the Standard 
chose to give him for it, and the consumer, in turn, had 
to pay for the refined products the prices fixed by the 
Standard — a monopoly absolute. How much better it 
had been if all these — the producer, refiner, transporter 
and consumer — had understood each other in time, and 
worked unitedly for a common square deal ! True, 
there had been moves in that direction, some of which 
had grown to large proportions, but there had never 
been half the representation there should have been 
nor half the unity. 

Too many within the lines of action were a hindrance 
rather than a help, readier to war on each other over 
bones introduced by the Standard, than to make war 
upon the common enemy. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


71 

Too many of them were shortsighted or indifferent 
in the matter of building up an independent press, 
which should supplant the organs of monopoly and be 
free and able to give the public the facts. 

There were too many so-called independent oil men 
who did not even lend an independent paper the support 
of being among its subscribers, to say nothing of these 
who would extend such patronage as they had to 
Standard establishments in consequence of the bait 
of cut prices, which could always be held out by the 
monopoly-supported concerns when they might thereby 
injure an independent competitor. Finally there were 
too many ways in which the Standard yeast of distrust 
and jealously was permitted to work, and refusing to be 
held together by the earnest, honest men who were in 
the work in heart, mind and purse, the misguided oil 
men permitted the Standard to work dissensions among 
them and make them instruments of their own 
destruction. 

Note. — T his book will have amply justified its publication if it 
reaches enough readers among oil men who at this point file a 
protest — resent the suggestion, even for the purposes of a story, 
that the Standard Oil Combine may be permitted to complete its 
programme and acquire total possession or absolute control of all 
branches of the oil business. The answer to them is this : In the 
past four years, starting with the Producers Oil Company, Limited, 
and in spite of all the obstructions, losses and discouragements the 
Standard could put in your way, you have built up the most for- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


72 

midable opposition that monopoly has ever encountered in this 
country, and standing now between it and its otherwise complete 
conquest of the whole oil business, you are in a position to control 
your measure of success in the future, and to say whether or not you 
will be responsible for such an ultimate cotidition as the assumed one 
which is intended to taunt you in the foregoing chapter. That you 
have made such gratifying progress in the past four years has been 
due to the fact that you have paid more heed than you ever did 
before to the lesson taught over and over again with particular 
emphasis to the people of the oil regions — the lesson of co-operation. 
The advance you have made in the spirit of that lesson has held your 
vStill distinctive interests together against a common enemy, in spite 
of all the efforts to create discords and stimulate special selfishness in 
your ranks. Retaining all the advance you have made, the way is 
now open for you to broaden the spirit of co operation into an 
organization in which there shall be no distinctive interests — one in 
which every stockholder, whether producer, refiner, transporter, 
dealer or consumer, will have a like interest in the welfare of every 
branch of the business, and whose individual interest will prosper 
only tlirough the common prosperity of all. Toward such an organ- 
ization you have already taken the initiatory steps, and it rests with 
you to say what the result will be. It is now within your power 
to build up a co-operative association which will be an Anti-Trust 
Company of itself — not a monopoly, no better but in degree than the 
Standard, but one in which you will receive fitting compensation for 
your products and your services, and will be approved and sustained 
by the public. But a few days ago (June 4, 1895), in presenting the 
annual report of the board of managers of your chief company, the 
secretary and treasurer thus clearly defined your position : “Stand- 
ing as you do, with so much accomplished, with so much to 
encourage ; with duty, both as citizens striving for an inherent, 
natural right, and as business men contending for a common business 
privilege, laying its peremptory command upon you, what shall the 
issue be? It is for you, the faithful remnant of that thousand odd 
men who organized and went out to battle four years ago in defence 
of your property and your industry, to decide — whether you shall, 


THE MIDDEE TEN 


73 


through indifference, indecision, want of spirit and courage, or 
other human frailty, lose all you have thus far gained in name and 
material advantage, and by your own volition elect to remain as a ser- 
vile class to be further exploited and despoiled to swell the millions 
of those who absolutely rule you in your business ; whether you shall 
go on with renewed vigor, with that patience which gives ability 
to do and to suffer in a great cause, without losing heart or stead- 
fastness of purpose, wringing at last from your oppressors the 
conceded right to do an unmolested business, or, at worst, over- 
whelmed by superior forces, to go down, heroically yielding up 
everything but honor and manhood. Which of these it shall be, is 
for this body of men — strong in the possibilities which belong 
to abundant resources, high order of energy, a favoring opportunity, 
and a good cause, to say.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


TT^HEN the national executive board of the Anti- 
Trust Company decided to proceed first against 
the Standard monopoly it lost no time in following the 
decision by action. An account was taken of the little 
gleaning refineries and the larger dismantled ones which 
had not yet been sold by the sheriff. These were 
readily bought by the company and new ones were 
built, together with tankage and local pipe lines to 
production assured to the company or purchased by it 
outright. 

And there was plenty of such production. With the 
independent organizations out of the way, and with 
nothing to bar it from getting crude at its own price 
without benefitting any competitor, there had been no 
incentive for the Standard to go further into the 
producing business, and its personal production was 
now largely of the partnership order — in the companies 
it had absorbed in carrying out other programmes, and 
in companies in which there were individuals it had 
given financial backing in return for services of a more 
or less beautiful character. 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


75 


The agents of the Anti-Trust Company found plenty 
of individual production, and as the owners of such 
were mainly included now in the membership of the 
new company, more production was offered than could 
be taken care of for some time. This was very grati- 
fying, as it relieved the company of the necessity of 
bringing oil from other countries, which it would have 
done for a time if necessary to loosen the grip of the 
Standard, and give the new company a start. Big 
refineries were now going up under the auspices of the 
new enterprise at the most advantageous points — 
refineries which should not simply turn out illuminants 
but the many products to be had from petroleum.* 

Tankage was now going up rapidly and all neccessary 
refining and shipping equipments were being provided. 

*It is natural enough, no doubt, that those who take a raw 
material and make refined products from it should know the most 
about the number, names and uses of such products ; but is it not 
a little singular that the average person having no connection 
with the oil business can do nearly as well as many producers in 
naming products of petroleum ? Is it not a fact that with scores of 
men — hundreds of them — the oil producing business has simply been 
regarded as a process of drilling holes into the ground, securing 
certain quantities of a thing called oil, then permitting their “cus- 
tomers” to take charge of it for them, keep their books for them, 
charge what they please for the service and pay what they please 
for the oil ? How many producers have paused to think of the actual 
value of their commodity as represented in its multiplied products, 
or of how many of these products they might themselves manu- 
facture with more profit than in otherwise disposing of their oil ? 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


76 

Pipe lines were being laid in spite of the usual obstruc- 
tive tactics practiced by the old combine. While tank- 
age was thus being provided it occurred to the Standard, 
as it had occurred before, when the appearance of any 
competition had been presented, that the individual 
producer should be shown the desirability of signing 
contracts to deliver all his oil to the Standard for a term 
of years — covering the period, with an ample margin, 
which it set for killing the new company. But the 
producer refused any longer to be shown the error of his 
ways in this respect, and the plan would not work. 

In the meantime the new company was rapidly 
increasing its facilities of every kind, and notice was 
being given by the national executive board, through 
the subordinate boards and the newspapers fixing a day 
which, although the company had now been in growing 
operation for some time, should be considered especially 
the date for uniform withdrawal of support from all 
monopoly concerns. A list was prepared of all the 
products of petroleum, and it was explained that every 
product of the Anti-Trust Company would bear its 
trade mark. 

Without regard to the inducements which might be 
held out by others, the members of the Anti-Trust 
Company were urged to stand together and refuse to 
buy at any price or take as a gift, any product in com- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


77 


petition with the products of their own company, so 
long as the latter were to be had. The members of the 
company everywhere were further urged to make the 
day a date when they should make common withdrawal 
of support of all kinds from all concerns they knew to 
be in the service of monopoly. 

While affairs were at this stage Warner dropped in 
one night at Hudson’s place and said he had a request 
to make. 

“I’ve been writing some letters,” he said, “that it 
strikes me would be all right to send out from head- 
quarters, and if you would send them down to Worth, 
and explain things at the same time, probably he’d send 
them along. I could send them myself, of course, but 
would ratlier have them go out from headquarters. Let 
me read one or two of them. This one is to the 
solicitor of the Standard Oil Trust ; 

“ It is a matter of report that the Standard pays you 
$50,000 a year, or as much as the salary of the President 
of the United States, which is a good deal more, no 
doubt, than you were able to command when your 
voice used to be raised against the methods of the 
monopoly you have since helped to direct. Now, while 
we do not mean to insinuate that you have not come as 
near earning your salary as any President the country 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


78 

has recently had, we are unable to see that you are 
rendering any sendee to the nation which entitles you 
to $50,000 per annum of its wealth. 

“ Moreover, we deem it an act of charity to restrain 
the combine you serve before its members 'hurt them- 
selves in trying to get hold of other planets. Not as a 
matter of good faith but for publication, would you 
mind letting us know how much more they now own 
of this land of the free and the home of the brave than 
is set forth in the following extracts? The extracts 
are from a book that ought to have a place in every 
home and every school in the land, namely — Henr>^ 
D. Lloyd’s ‘ Wealth Agaiast Commonwealth.’ Read : 

“ ‘ Poor’s Railroad Manual shows these men and their 
associates to be presidents or directors in thousands 
of miles of railroads, valued at hundreds of millions. 
Their names were prominent in the railroad deal of 
1892 and 1893, which had for its end to put the whole 
of New England under one hand, controlling both its 
land and water connections with the rest of the country. 
They stand at the receipt of custom at the railroad 
gates to the oil regions ; to the coal fields of Pennsyl- 
vania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois ; the 
copper, gold and silver mines of the West ; the iron 
mines of the West and South ; the turpentine forests 
and the lumber regions and cotton fields ; the food 


THE MTDDEE TEN 


79 


producing areas of the Mississippi basin ; the grazing 
lands of the plains. They are owners in the principal 
steamship lines between America and Europe and in 
the * whalebacks,’ which appear destined to drive other 
models out of the freight traffic of the lakes, and have 
begun to appear on the Eastern and Western oceans to 
capture the carrying business of the world. * * * 

They are in telegraphs, the gas supply of our large 
cities, street-railways, steel mills, shipyards, Canadian 
and American iron mines, town sites. Ore dug out 
of their own iron mines at the head of Lake Superior 
is carried along over their own railroad to their own 
furnaces and mills. ^ * Betrayal, bankruptcy, 

broken hearts, and death, have kept quick step with the 
march of the conquerors in iron as in oil. They are 
in the combination in anthracite coal, with which 
the acquisition by an American syndicate of tlie Nova 
Scotia coal deposits is closely connected. Theirs is the 
largest share in the natural-gas business in Pennsyl- 
vania, Ohio, New York, Indiana, Illinois. They are in 
the combination which controls lead, from pig to white 
lead, and turpentine and linseed-oil and paints. * * 

Most of their interests are in public functions, railroads, 
pipe lines, telegraphs, postal contracts, steamers, munici- 
pal franchises and the like ; but it is impossible to 
know their full extent with our present crude means 


8o 


THE middle ten 


for enforcing the truth that property is power and that 
civilization endures no irresponsible and anonymous 
power. The corporation is an agency by which the 
capitalist can do business in ambuscade. * * This 

wealth is as much too vast for the average arithmetical 
comprehension as the size of the dog-star, 400 times 
larger than the sun. These incomes are sums which their 
fortunate owners could not count as the}' received them. 
If they did nothing but stand all day at the printing- 
presses of the Treasuiy' Department while the millions 
came uncrinkled out in one-dollar greenbacks, or 
worked only at catching the new dollars as they rolled 
out from the dies of the mint they could not count 
them. If they worked eight hours a day, and six days 
a week, and fifty-two weeks in the year, they could not 
count their money. The dollars would come faster 
than their fingers could count them ; the dollars would 
slip out of their clutch and fall to the floor, and, piling 
up and up, would reach their knees, their middle, their 
arms, their mouth, and Midas would be snuffed out 
in his own gold.’ ” 

“ Really, now, Mr. Solicitor, we cannot stand by and 
see them snuffed out in that way, especially when so 
many other people are snuffed out by them in exactly 
the opposite way. We cannot permit them longer to be 
exposed to the danger of being drowned in that 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


8l 


manner. The golden stream which threatens them 
already represents too many dried up springs — too 
many shriveled up industries that used to be prosperous. 
You will therefore excuse us for knocking the props 
from under the concern whose methods enable it to lay 
so much of the countiy' under tribute.” 

Warner’s next letter was a lengthy communication 
addressed to a railroad company, the chief business 
of whose officials, he charged, was to violate the charter 
of the road, rob the stockholders and the public by 
discriminating against ordinary shippers in favor of the 
big combine of the region ; to switch tlie affairs of the 
road around in various processes of bankruptcy and 
receivership ; to re-organize, re-naine and re-fund ; in the 
meantime to get out special trains from time to time 
with job lots of officials and ck-efs whose province it was 
to teeter on their toes and heels and look wise around 
the stations, and to note between stops whether any 
poor son of Somewhere was earning his forty -cents a 
day, gross, and something for the road as well, or was 
acquiring extravagant tastes by eating berries from the 
bushes along tlie way. 

He described one of such official outfits, and set forth 
that better boards could l>e formed from the ordinary 
subordinates — that such boards would conduct the 
business of the road more capably, honestly and profit- 


82 


THE MIDDEE ten 


ably for the stockholders and the public than the 
jobbers who held their places by reason of their “ pulls,” 
and depended on their subordinates for whatever 
practical knowledge of railroading they found necessary. 
He drew on L<loyd for another quotation as follow^s : 

“ Out of $800,000,000 paid yearly in this country for 
the carriage of freight, it was estimated in 1888, by one 
who knew (Hon. Franklin B. Gowen before the United 
States Senate Interstate Commerce Commission), that 
$50,000,000 to $100,000,000 goes to favored shippers. 
As the result of a personal examination made as an expert 
for stockholders, he declared that one of the great trunk 
lines had in the last twenty years thus diverted to the 
favorites of the managers $100,000,000 of the money of 
the stockholders. Besides his yachts and trotters, every 
Captain of Industry worth talking about keeps his stud 
of railway presidents and general freight agents.” 

In the course of his letter Warner had this to say 
with reference to charters and violations of the law : 

“ You have an old right of way along the valley here 
that you hold by patching it up and running a so-called 
train over it once a year — at a rate of speed that gives 
the rabbits with late broods along the track ample time 
to grow enough to be able to get out and move on. 
Holding this unused right of way, and with no competi- 
tor, your own operating line has not been profitable (for 


THR MIDDLK TEN 


83 

the stockholders and the public), judging from the 
receivership business, re-organizing and re-funding 
going on from time to time. You should therefore 
thank our company for preparing to supplant you with 
a road of its own. 

“ The regret of the company in thus supplanting you 
is tempered by the thought that you, with other roads,, 
have practiced discriminations against this place to the 
extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars and that, 
when so found guilty and ordered to make reparation 
by one of the highest authorities in the land, you 
ignored and in effect defied that authority. In letting 
you go the company’s sorrow is also tempered by the 
thought that in standing in the way of other roads 
you have held back the development of this region, and 
that you long ago forfeited your right to do business — 
to say nothing of your right to prevent others from 
doing business.” 

‘‘ There,” said Warner, ‘‘ just send those along to 
Worth and tell him they size things iip as well as you 
could have done yourself — or words to that effect. Tell 
him I’m getting up some more and trust he will send 
them to the right spots.” 

Hudson took the letters and said he would send them 
as requested. 


CHAPTER X. 


^HE day set for the formal beginning of the raid 



^ on individual selfishness and the end of patronage 
of monopolies and monopoly establishments, brought 
forth great fruits. One of its results was the stopping 
of monopoly papers, the ordering out of advertisements 
and the withdrawal from them of support of patronage 
of all kinds. The circulation of such papers, which 
had been steadily falling off since the formation of 
the Anti-Trust Company, was now cut down to less 
than the number of employes of the combines such 
organs served — for many of such employes were now 
in sentiment with the new company. In vain did the 
organs send out their agents with increased premiums, 
cut prices and other inducements. The people would 
have nothing to do with them. Papers of all political 
complexions, known to be in the service of the monop- 
olies and political jobbers, went overboard, and appeals 
in the name of party were made in vain against the 
overthrow. The substance of the answer was this : 

“This is not party but business. The monopolies 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


85 

have not recognized party lines in dealing with us. 
Neither do we propose to recognize any party lines in 
dealing with them.” 

This good work — a work sufficient in itself to effect a 
great but peaceful revolution in public sentiment, and 
worth alone the price of the formation of the new 
company, — was carried on all over the country, taking 
in the organs of all combines. If the Anti-Trust Com- 
pany had been able to bring about no more than this 
result, the credit would belong to it of having accom- 
plished one of the greatest and most important awak- 
enings of public sentiment in history. 

With reference to the products of petroleum the 
lines of public patronage were most closely drawn. 
The people would not take any of them at any price 
unless they were unable, to obtain those bearing the 
trade mark of tlie Anti-Trust Company. Although 
the total manufacturing capacity of the company was 
several times greater than that of all the independent 
concerns at any previous period of the business, the 
company was overwhelmed with orders. Increased 
facilities and more plants were immediately found to be 
necessary and the work of providing such was carried 
on with all possible despatch. All that was required to 
command the trade in all the products of petroleum was 
the capacity to supply the demand. The patronage 


86 


THK MIDDLE TEN 


was assured through the membership of the company. 
Though the profits from the business established were 
great in the aggregate — and were obtained by lowering 
generally the prices to consumers and making them as 
uniform as distance, obstruction and other considera- 
tions would permit — it was decided to boom the funds 
and the progress of the company by fixing another day 
for individual and general contributions. When it had 
been observed the work of the previous Contribution 
Day, great though it had been, was small as compared 
with the result. Men of means, who had built up a 
legitimate business, but who had seen from the growing 
power of combinations that there was a time coming 
when their business must become simply a branch 
of some trust or go to the wall — these men saw in the 
development of the Anti-Trust Company the promise 
of a show for all who did business in a legitimate way, 
and they gave gladly and liberally. 

Prom the progress the company had made it was no 
longer in order to look upon these contributions as gifts. 
They were investments. By all classes of people these 
investments were made — from the poorest workingmen 
up to the men who would have been considered rich 
before the time came when such might have no 
assurance that they were any safer than their poorest 
brother if the crushing policy of some combine brought 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


87 

them in its way. Accordingly when the returns from 
the second Contribution Day came in they increased the 
funds of the company to such an extent it had no reason 
to wish to trade treasuries with Uncle Sam himself. 

The work of monopolizing tbe oil business went pn 
in all its branches under the direction of the new com- 
pany, meeting everywhere with all possible opposition 
from the old combine, but moving on just the same. 
It was worth the price of admission, so to speak, to have 
these obstructions and delays interposed, or attempted, 
just to see the monopoly claims and arguments riddled 
by the independent press of the country. It was now 
making a feature of showing the different kinds of 
business in which Standard capital was practicing 
monopoly methods outside of the oil business, and lines 
were being drawm accordingly for present and future 
action. Meanwhile its grip on the oil business was 
rapidly loosening. Unable to find markets for its 
products, its plants and lines were becoming clogged. 

The price of crude oil, first regulated by the natural 
developments of the business, then by speculation, then 
in an alleged open market controlled by the Standard, 
was now regulated by the business of the Anti-Trust 
Company, which had already advanced the price of 
crude and yet made a marked average reduction in the 
prices of the refined products, doing so with handsome 


88 


THE MIDDEE TEN 


profits. The new company bought nothing but actual 
oil, and the only way in which the Standard could 
depress the crude market would be by being able to 
offer the new company more actual oil than it could 
receive, which was out of the question, as it was in 
shape to take at the market price — its own price — all 
the oil the Standard could disgorge, the same as in the 
case of an individual seller. Moreover, apart from 
these safeguards, there was the common bond of 
membership in the company sufficient to keep the 
members from being drawn into any betrayal of its 
interests by the bait of high prices, low prices or no 
prices. 

The long successful methods were resorted to again 
by the Standard of squeezing the new company by the 
manipulation of railroad rates, but, the attempts only 
served to cause temporary annoyance and to add 
strength to the work already in process of causing 
the forfeiture of many violated charters with which 
the Standard was identified. In spite of attempted 
obstructions of rights of way, interference with the 
manufacture of supplies and shipment of the same, the 
pipe lines of the new company, both for crude and 
refined, were reaching across the country in all direc- 
tions — to the seaboard, the lakes and through the 
interior. The idea so long held, that the establish- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


89 

merit of a line to the seaboard was the one great 
desideratum, was only a part of the plan of the new 
company. It was figured that if the tribute paid by 
former independents to the Standard and the railroads 
had been diverted to another purpose it would have 
been sufficient to extend a pipe line artery from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific and provide all the branch veins 
the system required. The way the railroads shifted 
their rates and applied the screws of extortion as the 
lines of the company extended from point to point made 
more material for the legal representatives of the com- 
pany in their collection of evidence against the railroads 
preparatory to having the charters forfeited of those 
that had violated the law. 

Moreover, the new company, in shipping to distant 
points where extortion could yet be practiced, could 
well afford to pay the extortionate rate on small quan- 
tities when by so doing it compelled the Standard to 
supply larger quantities and sell below cost in bidding 
to hold the trade. The new company could ship 
enough to cause prices to be cut to next to nothing, 
and the members of the Anti-Trust Company in such 
localities, acting in conjunction with the local executive 
boards, could lay in a supply of the enemy’s cut-price 
products, and thus make a proportionate saving for the 
new company while extending its lines. 


CHAPTER XL 


NE of the objections which had been offered against 



^ the selection of the Standard Oil Trust as the first 
trust to be attacked was that it would be like shutting 
the cage after the bird had flown — that there was no 
assurance the oil bnsiness would last more than a few 
years longer ; that the the supplies would then be ex- 
hausted and that the Standard, with the hundreds of 
millions it had taken out of 4:he business, could laugh 
at the awakening of the people that came too late. 
They held it reasonable to believe that scientific re- 
search, stimulated b)^ a growing scarcity of petroleum, 
would at no remote period develop a substitute for 
illuminating oil which would send the latter the way 
of the pine knot and the tallow dip, and that whatever 
capital should be invested in the meantime in the oil 
business would be subject to that risk. 

The Anti-Trust Company had now progressed beyond 
the point where those who had offered these arguments 
might pose as prophets. Since the formation of the 
company a sufficient time had elapsed to remunerate 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


9 ^ 


it financially for its investments in the oil business, 
to say nothing of the peaceful revolution it had effected 
in paving the way for its conquest of other Trusts. 
Though some scientist should flash away the whole 
illuminating oil business in the twinkling of an eye, 
it could have no other effect on the company than to 
cause a greater centralization of its forces on combines 
booked to come next after the Standard, and w^hich were 
already feeling in an effective way the power of the 
Monopoly of the People. Finally, the oil business was 
not exhausted, and the profits were coming to the com- 
pany — to the ][>eople — which used to pile up in the Stand- 
ard tills until they found an outlet in the absorption of 
railroad, mining, steamship, telegraph and other profit- 
able investments as indicated in the. preceding pages. 

What the agricultural classes had sought in their 
approval and support of the organization w^as not the 
opportunity to leave their farms and go to work for the 
company, but such a re-adjUvStment of the industrial and 
commercial conditions as would give them steadier 
markets for their products — effect a better balance 
between the American industrial and agricultural 
classes and create a better understanding and more prac- 
tical bond of sympathy between them. Their efforts to 
that end w^ere bearing splendid fruit, and they could 
look logically into the future to a time when what they 


92 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


had termed The Anti-Trust Company could fitly be 
called The American Employment Bureau, giving 
employment to workingmen in all channels of industry 
and commerce hitherto controlled by private monopo- 
lies, and using its surplus earnings in the extension of 
means of employment and in public improvements- 
Then no sober, industrious citizen need be without 
employment, either in the company or for himself, and 
his earnings, whatever they might be, would be such as 
could give him no just cairse for complaint, inasmuch 
as they would be regulated by the natural laws of 
supply and demand, and not by the unnatural laws 
which afford a temporary rush of work and then as 
abruptly cause a shut-down for an indefinite period — 
that is to say, while a famine is caused in the products 
created in the artificial rush between the sandwiched 
periods of stagnation. There then could be no reason- 
able cause for such a thing as a strike in any branch 
of industry or commerce controlled by the company, 
for whatever the wages might be, those who earned 
them would know tliey were governed by natural condi- 
tions, applying with like justice to all concerned. 


CHAPTER XIL 


©IDS for compromise now began to be heard. Offers 
came from railroads to enter into some arrange- 
ment which would be satisfactory to the new company. 
Assurances were being received in a guarded way from 
the minor railroads that they were themselves unwilling 
instruments in the hands of their big masters — the 
trunk lines and traffic associations, — and would hail 
with pleasure any alliance with the Anti-Trust Com- 
pany which would insure them simply the natural 
business to which they were entitled, and which they 
declared they were not now receiving — whatever the 
appearances might be. Here is a sample of the replies 
sent from headquarters in response to such assurances : 

“ Your case will be looked into in common with the 
rest of the railroads and will be accorded the treatment 
deserved. If you have come near enough to obeying 
the laws to justify this company in permitting you 
to be associated with the roads of its own, eventually to 
be established, you shall be so treated. As individuals, 
the members of the Anti-Trust Company are friendly, 


94 


THE MIDDEE TEN 


considerate people, but as a corporation, like every 
other corporation, they have no soul, and it is as a corpor- 
ation they have to deal with the railroads and other 
corporations.” 

Overtures were also being received from the Stand- 
ard, It wanted to enter into some arrangement for a 
division of territory, or to make a sale of its now 
clogged and crippled works and lines to the new com- 
pany, or enter into some other deal. In answer to these 
overtures Warner suggested the following be sent to the 
old monopoly : 

“It is somewhat tough, of course, that with all your 
wealth and your mammoth plants, you find yourself 
forced to a point where you cannot compel people to 
patronize you ; but you should be thankful that it has 
taken them so long to get their eyes open to that fact. 
We have no quarrel with you as individuals — will be 
glad to have you join us as such and put all the money 
you please into our Monopoly of the People ; but we 
must deal with you as a corporation in your general 
combinations, as we have already dealt with you in 
the oil business. 

“It is not our business as a corporation to inquire 
how many millions of dollars worth of the property in 
your possession the operation of our company will absorb 
— no more than you considered it yours to do so with 


THK MIDDI>: TEN 


95 


that of others^ ranging from manufacturers and 
transporters down to the tank wagon peddlers. It is 
wrong, of course, in any spirit of common justice to 
injure great concerns or small ones ; but you must 
recollect that this is simply a matter of business. As 
individuals we extend an invitation to you to join our 
company and co-operate with us ; as a corporation we 
extend nothing to you but the things, which will most 
quickly and effectively drive you out of the Trust 
business. 

“ In conclusion do you not really feel relieved to get 
out of the business in which you have used so many 
assumed names and taught the people such a valuable 
lesson ? Is it not a relief to you to know that it cuts you 
loose from beneficiaries of your pay rolls whose ability to 
draw their salaries has outlasted the particular useful- 
ness which first endeared them to you ? But no more 
for the present.” 

Having followed the progress of the company to this 
point for The Middle Ten, its historian leaves it with 
the members of the club to do the rest — either to leave 
it here or follow it on in further conquests according to 
their own logic and fancy ; not with the end in view of 
having ever)’body ultimately employed by a common 
company or by the state, but with the aim of broader 
experiment in the line of developing what the individ- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


96 

iial should be free to do and what should be done by 
associations of individuals ; of experiment on a larger 
scale, industrially and commercially, in learning where 
the lines lie between the things which many may do 
unitedly with the greatest profit for each, and what each 
may do independently with the greatest profit to all. 


OTHER PAPERS. 



MONO the other contributions offered was a rather 


^ peculiar one entitled “ The Sur^dval of the Fit- 
test,” from which the following extracts are given : 

“ Credited to the old Roman poet, Horace, are these 
lines relating to mankind : 

When these brutes, now called men, first crawled out of the 
ground, a dumb and dirty lot, they fought for nuts and sheltering 
spots, with nail and fist ; then with sticks ; later with arms forged of 
metal. Then they invented names and words. With language and 
thought came cities and some relief from strife. 

“ This is the plain, practical start old Uncle Horace 
has given us. If he were living to-day and could make 
another summary for the centuries which have since 
rolled away the chief changes he would be required to 
make would be simply changes of weapons — the old 
fight has been going on just the same, and the rule now, 
as ever, is the survival of the fittest. 

“ In a good many ways — well meaning enough, many 
of them, — people have sought along sentimental lines 
to build up the notion that man is more than an 
animal ; that the brute characteristics may eventually 


THE MIDDEE ten 


be weeded out of his nature and that, through restraint 
of the strong and assistance for the weak, mankind may 
ultimately become a great brotherhood — a race of 
brothers finding development for the noblest elements in 
their nature by helping the feebler members of the 
family and making the world happier for themselves by 
making it happier for others. This is all wrong. It is 
attempted evasion of the law of the survival of the 
fittest, and every effort in that line is a contribution to 
future woe for the race. As illustrating this, note the 
following extracts from a scientific standpoint.” 

[The quotations made were from a course of lectures 
on Darwinism and race progress, showing how germs of 
disease are benefactors of the race by killing the feeble 
and unsound, the healthy and vigorous usually resisting 
such attacks by reason of their physical fitness to 
survive and perpetuate their species ; how, through 
improved methods of nursing, clothing and the use of 
artificially prepared food, sickly infants are helped to 
survive their first and most dangerous years, subse- 
quently are artificially protected from infectious diseases 
and thus are permitted to live to lower the average 
physique of the fathers and mothers of the next genera- 
tion; how class distinctions of an artificial kind are 
being destroyed only to be replaced by others of a most 
enduring kind — a kind in which the differences will 
become organic.] 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


99 


“ There you have it briefly — a little cold, to be sure^ 
but thoroughly practical. The survival of the fittest — 
that is to say, of the ones most capable of surviving — is 
the only natural course. Guided by the force of this 
natural law, the large fish destroy little ones, the wolves 
fall upon wounded fellow members of their pack and 
destroy them ; and thus the process goes on among the 
inhabitants of earth, sky and sea. Man alone makes 
believe not to be acting on that principle, but he is 
doing so just the same. Help for the weak and sickly, 
as we have seen, is misplaced sentiment. 

“ Such help but serves to increase the number of those 
who will require similar help in the future, and is there- 
fore in the nature of contributing to the future lowering 
of the race. No such help .should be extended. The 
vocation of the physician and nurse and others who 
minister to the sickly and unfortunate should be pro- 
hibited by law. They are simply artificial interferences 
with the natural processes of evolution in the physical 
world. Birds, brutes and fishes, in their natural state, 
do not have them and neither should man. 

“ People capable of surviving without them do not 
require such services, and those who do require them 
should not be permitted to survive. As it is with 
people physically so it is with them in all vocations. 
There should be no sentimenal help, no artificial bols- 


lOO 


THE MIDDEE ten 


tering- up of those kvSS capable than others of fighting 
the battle of life. The results of any efforts in that 
line must necessarily be detrimental to the future 
progress of the race. In the course of sworn testimony, 
a few years ago, a prominent corporation man of the 
middle class said : ‘ There is no help for any of us, 

but the weakest must go first.’ 

‘‘ That is the key to the whole matter — ‘ the weakest 
must go first ’ in all things, and to attempt to retard 
their departure is to retard the natural course of prog- 
ress. It is not held, that the surviving ones will be the 
noblest and best, but simply the ones most capable of 
surviving in their particular lines. The rule applies 
alike to the good and the bad — clergymen and thieves, 
scholars and ignoramuses, peaceful people and prize 
fighters, honest men and rascals, and all other ranks of 
mankind. In each the ones most capable of surviving 
will be the survivors. 

‘‘This being true, it is silly and not natural to 
attempt to maintain anything like equality of rights or 
equality of possessions among mankind. On this point 
note the following extract from a recent lengthy article 
in the Cleveland, O., Leader^ taking William Dean 
Howells, the novelist, to task for the sentiments ex- 
pressed by him in a couple of sonnets on ‘ Society.’ 
The Leader says : 


THE MIDDEE TEN 


lOI 


As yet we cannot believe that men a little lower and weaker than 
the angels will ever be made by legislation or any structure of govern- 
ment no more privileged or blessed with the good things of life than 
other men, at the opposite extreme of the race, who are only a little 
above the apes in powers and character. We are not able to believe 
in the establishment and maintenance of equality of possession and 
enjoyment as long as there must be enormous inequality in ability 
to acquire and to hold. 

“ The Leader's logic on that point is good. It is a 
certain fact that, as it says, there can be no ‘ establish- 
ment of equality of possession and enjoyment as long as 
there must be enormous inequality in ability to acquire 
and hold.’ Of course there have been things which 
have seemed to show exceptions to this rule, but they 
have only been apparent — not real. For example take 
the city of Cleveland — its incorporation as a city. The 
people knew very well that until they all became alike 
in size, color, strength, intelligence, and in every other 
respect, they could not have equality in their possessions 
and enjoyments, and that it would therefore be out of 
place to consider any such equality in the regulation of 
their city. 

“ But they followed the sentimental notion that, 
although they were not all alike, yet by mutual con- 
cessions in framing laws or ordinances to govern them 
they could strike a fair general average in such, and 
that, whether they had come into the world as creatures 
to be pitied or beings to be envied, there were things 


102 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


they could own and enjoy in common as long as they 
kept within the mutual regulations or laws. They 
have carried this foolish notion so far as actually to 
own in common fine public buildings, great systems 
of public improvement, beautiful parks and the general 
public possessions of a great city. 

“ The notion, moreover, has been permitted to prevail 
politically in the state and nation. 

“ The Leader's logic applies with the same force to 
equality of suffrage as to any other kind of equality. 
Men can no more be political equals and vote with 
equal intelligence and judgment than they can hold 
and enjoy property in common ; yet the American 
people have not only permitted canal drivers and rail 
splitters to vote, the same as gentlemen of culture and 
leisure, but have gone to the ridiculous extreme of per- 
mitting men to advance from those common ranks to 
the highest office within the gift of the nation, as in the 
cases of Garfield and Lincoln. 

“ The thing is most absurd, to be sure, and the many 
incidental features connected with it are artificial, 
transitory — a temporary^ matter of form. By way of 
illustration it might be said our friend, the Leader^ 
well knows that all the matter it prints will not be of 
the same service and significance to all who read it. 
Some of it necessarily will be harmful rather than 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


103 

helpful by creating false impressions, false antagonisms, 
false ambitions, in the minds of those not intellectually 
capable of reaching the right conclusions from what 
they read ; yet as a mere matter of form, in conformity 
with the whimsical usages of the day, it is presumed 
that the Leader is sold to anyone who has the money to 
buy it — regardless of the nearness of the characteristics 
of the purchaser either to those of the angel or the ape. 

“This ‘vulgarization of knowledge,’ as it has been 
aptly termed, — its extension to all classes of people, 
regardless of their ‘ ability to acquire and hold,’ as the 
Leader puts it, — is one of the absurdities growing out of 
the false notion that there are privileges people may 
have in common regardless of their individual in- 
equality. It is too much, perhaps, to expect that the 
Leader alone may give a practical illustration of what 
ought to be done in this respect by requiring every man 
who desires a copy of the Leader to produce verbal or 
documentary proof that he has the same equality of 
intellectual 'ability ‘ to acquire and hold ’ as every other 
person who has been permitted to read the paper. 

“ But in due time these things will regulate them- 
selves. They are doing so even now. Notwithstanding 
the popular government fad, the operation of the law of 
the survival of the fittest is going on and will eventually 
bring about the proper order of things — when the canal 


104 MIDDI.K TEN 

drivers and rail splitters will remain such, and the 
voting, if any, and conducting of the affairs of govern- 
ment, will be carried on by those specially adapted to 
such matters. 

“ Various standards of survival have obtained in 
various ages. In the present age the standard will con- 
tinue to be one of limitless business and money getting, 
and the winners will be the ones who, taking due care 
of their health, and having utter disregard for the feel- 
ings and welfare of everybody else, — yes, utter heartless- 
ness if you choose to term it, — will pursue the dollar till 
they capture it, no matter through what wrongs or 
miseries for others the trail may lead. People have no 
business to be in a position to be made miserable. If 
they lack the ingenuity or willingness to sell a few 
hundred thousand dollars’ worth of capitalized stock in 
some swindling company, laugh at the duped investors 
and pass on to other conquests, they have no right to 
complain of the man of business who makes use of such 
abilities and opportunities. It is a matter of the sur- 
vival of the fittest. If they are too chicken-hearted to 
enter into conspiracies with railway managers whereby 
charters are violated and competitors and the public are 
robbed on the one hand and railroad stockholders on the 
other, they have no reason to complain if live business 
men throw no such chances over their shoulders. These 


thp: middle ten 


105 

are the successful men — these are the ones who will 
exemplify the rule of the survival of the fittest under 
the improved and growing idea of business in the 
present age. 

“ By way of illustration let us go back again to the 
city of Cleveland. From within its limits there 
emanated some years ago — not from ignorant apishness 
or any chicken-heartedness as to popular rights and 
privileges, but from other grades of human develop- 
ment — plans for transferring, through rebate arrange- 
ments with railroad managers, the property and busi- 
ness of many people to a little company of individuals 
specially created for the purpose. The orders went 
forth. The fact that they reduced the richest portion of 
Pennsylvania to a state of panic caused the people of 
those regions — the oil regions — to entertain the con- 
ceited idea that neither because of their differences 
individually nor for any other reason should they 
permit the natural products and industries of their 
region to be taken from them and owned by the little 
company in another state, so excellently fitted to judge 
and declare how much the people of the oil regions 
could be permitted to possess and enjoy without hurting 
themselves. 

“ The people, in their then crude idea of the fitness 
of things, which regarded the welfare of each as a part 


I06 THE middle ten 

of the welfare of all, were impelled almost to the verge 
of revolution — classed this excellent business proceed- 
ing as a conspiracy and an outrage, repulsed its 
promoters and caused the abandonment of the company 
under the name it had taken. Had the people con- 
tinued to stand together in this way either as individ- 
uals or as members of a common company — had they 
continued to cling to that fad idea that the welfare of 
each should be considered a part of the welfare of all — 
it would have required a long time to transfer their 
rights and possessions to the little band so ready and 
able to handle them. But the people, of course, would 
not do that. 

“ All the little band had to do was to change its name, 
apply its absorbing methods more gradually and bide 
its time. Observe the result. Step by step, wreck by 
wreck, purchase by purchase, traitor by traitor, dissen- 
sion by dissension, interest by interest — by control of 
individuals, companies, press, courts and legislatures — 
the little band’s work has gone on, piling up wealth by 
the hundreds of millions, until it is now directed toward 
putting the finishing touches on the establishment of a 
complete monopoly in all branches of the business in 
which it was once shut out as a gang of conspirators 
against individual rights and common commerce. 

“ This is what is meant by the survival of the fittest 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


107 


in the development of our business age. It may not 
suit those who cling either to old fogy ideas as to ‘ life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ or new f angled 
plans for more co-operation ; but what are they going 
to do about it ? ” 


MANY OR ONE? 


^NE of the members of the chib who had agreed in 
the main with the views of the member who had 
written the story of the Anti-Trust Company, the chief 
points of which they had discussed while the paper was 
in preparation, objected to the manner of procedure 
while endorsing the general sentiments. He offered a 
supplementary paper on the same subject, but argued 
that instead of moving toward the formation of a great 
co-operative company, on a larger scale than ever before 
attempted, there first should be more general experi- 
ments of that character, municipal and othewise, and 
that the Anti-Trust Company, or its equivalent, would 
be the natural outgrowth of successful operation of 
the smaller associations. His contribution was in part 
as follows : 

“It is not to be supposed that people may go to the 
polls one day as a nation and sustain all kinds of over- 
grown private combines and political crookedness which 
they have helped to create and go another day, in an- 
other capacity, and do the reverse. If such a change 


THK MIDDI.E TEN 


109 

were possible a national organization might be created 
on short notice which would operate successfully ; but 
with the facts plainly in view that people will not even 
try the experiment of more local co-operation and 
municipal ownership and operation of franchises they 
now present to private corporations, it is no more than 
an agreeable fiction to speak of a national company or a 
national government operating on that principle. 
People decline as yet to appreciate the fact that if they 
can afford to pay certain sums regularly to water, fuel, 
light, street railway and other private corporations they 
could just as well make similar payments to companies 
of their own or of their respective cities. 

“ It is the same principle as paying rent when the 
amount of the rent paid regularly into some substantial 
local building and loan association would apply on the 
purchase of the property and eventually pay for it. 
The fact that a good many cities, braving the odium of 
being charged with drifting toward state socialism, 
have established water works of their own and have 
found them their best paying assets, does not seem to 
have taught them to extend the good work to the 
ownership of other works of a public character ; nor 
has their satisfactory experience served as an example 
to others to the extent naturally to be expected, as may 
be seen from the number of cities where the water 


no 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


supply is still owned and sold by private corporations. 
They might as properly be permitted to own the sewers, 
the streets and city buildings and require tolls for 
tbeir use. 

“ As for co-operative associations they should be ex- 
perimented with everywhere. The value of the success- 
ful ones would more than offset all the failures, for 
failures there would necessarily be and many of them, 
as there have been in all movements. Among the 
associations thus successfully established there would 
naturally develop a fellow feeling, which would be the 
bond of greater co-operation and fellowship. It might 
be a co-operative building here, a factory there, an oil 
association over yonder, a coal industry somewhere 
else — and so on. It would be the same industrially and 
commercially as it has been politically — first a clearing 
here and there, then growing settlements, colonies and 
eventually states and a nation. It must be the same 
way with industry and commerce — only an individual 
interested here and there at first, then associations of 
individuals, then federation of associations. Why 
should people hesitate to make experiments of that 
character? Should the fact that there will be neces- 
sarily failures stand in their way ? What does any 
system, either of government or of anything else, which 
exists to-day, represent but the progress of the lesson 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


III 


of co-operation the world has been studying in all ages 
and which lesson it is still studying and still must 
study ? 

“ Singular it is, surely, that among the many associa- 
tions continually springing up there are so few co-opera- 
tive industrial and commercial organizations — local 
associations managed like the local building and loan 
associations already mentioned. The fact that there 
have been some of these loan associations in which the 
members have had their credulity imposed upon and 
have been swindled by unscrupulous men at the head of 
them, has not affected the principle of co-operation and 
economy underlying them. They have been the means 
of securing for thousands of people homes of their own 
and of saving for others what, in many cases, would 
have been wasted. 

“It matters not that the individual goes into such a 
co-operation in the spirit of self-interest, for only through 
the common progress of the association does the interest 
of each of its members advance ; thus while each may 
be said to be a unit for himself, or herself, all form 
a unit for the common welfare of the association. 
Party lines will be found to be no bar to their stand- 
ing together in opposition to any policy or candi- 
date for public office whose success will endanger 
their mutual interests in that association. The con- 


II2 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


sequent logic is that if there were enough co-operative 
associations of that kind in enough branches of industry 
and economy they would stand by each other as associa- 
tions as well as individuals, and as the monopolies and 
trusts of to-day would be their common foe, they would 
be unitedly opposed and broken up. 

“ If such co-operative associations existed to-day in 
the number and variety they should, together with the 
municipal ownership and operation of public franchises, 
the monopoly of the corporation could not live ; and 
until they have such an existence locally they need not 
be expected to exist nationally. But the time will come 
when they will so co-operate. They will be forced 
into it. 

“ What is any club, society, party, city, state or 
nation but the result of co-operation — incomplete neces- 
sarily, because of the incompleteness of individuals, but 
giving the world all it has of common order and 
common freedom? Necessity has forced people into 
this co-operation politically, in government, and is 
forcing them into it industrially and commercially. 
Commercial and industrial monarchs need not be ex- 
pected to be more merciful and just than those of other 
kinds. The power people put into the hands of a few 
is better distributed among thousands. That this is so 
politically the people have learned, that it is so indus- 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


trially and commercially they are learning — learning, 
not voluntarily but of necessity. lyet us have more 
co-operation. Through it will come the settlement of 
the money question, the tariff question and many 
others as well. I^et us get better acquainted with 
our fellow travelers and organize and act mutually in 
matters in which we can agree — not waiting for a time 
which will never come — a time when in all things we 
will look and think and act alike. 

“ While making these experiments locally there are 
many ways in which the people may make conservative 
experiments as a nation along the same line. For 
example, they might authorize their representatives in 
the national law-making body to provide for the con- 
struction and operation of a number of government 
ships of commerce as well as of war — ships which not 
only should carry mails but should do freight and 
passenger business as well. Think what a miserably 
small percentage, even of the carr^dng trade of this 
country, is done by American ships ! Think of our 
thousands of miles of sea coast — of how little their ports 
now represent of American shipping and of what they 
might represent in the future ! Is it not worth while to 
look after this business, and is it not being foolishly 
neglected ? In this connection note the following item 
from a Pittsburg, Pa., newspaper : 


114 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


“Antouio Navarro, who is one of the oldest and most extensive 
importers and exporters of the Argentine Republic is here with 
A. M. Clark, his agent and interpreter, for the purpose of interesting 
the manufacturers of Pittsburg in the Argentine Republic as a new 
and flourishing market for their products. The government of the 
Argentine Republic, realizing that the United States has better 
opportunities for placing its machinery and manufactured wares in 
South America than England, which is at present supplying the 
trade, has interested itself in Mr. Navarro’s visit to this country, and 
is giving him every encouragement in pushing the project, which it 
regards as being of vital importance to the development of its 
country. Said Mr. Navarro last night; “The Argentine Republic 
has been receiving little or nothing from the United States in the 
way of manufactured products. England has availed itself of the rich 
market, and has been enjoying it almost exclusively, although 
American manufacturers can place their goods in the South American 
markets at a much less cost than Great Britain. We regard Pitts- 
burg as one of the most important manufacturing cities in the world, 
and our government, is especially anxious to acquaint the manu- 
facturers of this city with the wonderful resources of its lands. The 
demand for machinery is increasing every day, and we are anxious 
to interest the Pittsburg manufacturers, as we appreciate the superi- 
ority of their products over those sent to us by England.” 

“ There is material for a whole political campaign in 
that one item. What it says of the Argentine Republic 
is true in some degree not only of other countries of 
South America but of the Eastern World as well. It 
speaks of the still undeveloped reciprocity policy of 
James G. Blaine — the only natural and just policy 
among nations as among individuals. Would it not be 
a great step in that direction to have government 
ownership of mail ships, carrying also freight, and 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


II5 

carrying it with no more discrimination between ship- 
pers than in carrying their letters, papers and other 
matter transmitted through the mails ? 

“ England stimulates, if it does not maintain, its 
shipping trade by means of subsidies. The principle 
of the subsidy is that no private monopoly can profit 
from such without benefitting, in some measure, the 
people who have been taxed to furnish the subsidy. 
Do these benefits to the people offset the private use 
and abuse of power which the subsidies foster ? Some 
of our statesmen think they do, and in consequence the 
United States is now making a present of millions of 
dollars (throwing in a mail monopoly as well) to a 
steamship company in which capital is invested of a 
combine that has built up a mighty monopoly on the 
land, and evidently seeks now to establish another on 
the sea. 

“ No, the subsidizing of individuals or private mon- 
opolies is not what is wanted either on land or water. 
Instead of subsidizing steamship companies let the 
government construct and operate ships of its own, 
with like rates for everybody for like service. Is it 
more dangerous to popular rights to have such large 
interests developed, owned and operated by the repre- 
sentatives of the people — the government — than to have 
them in the hands of a comparatively few men with the 
power to use them to suit themselves ? 


ii6 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


“ Those who will so argue and punctuate their argu^ 
ments with frequent grave allusions to ‘paternalism/ 
will also argue that the postal business of the United 
States should not be conducted by the government, 
but rather by some such enterprising private organ- 
ization as the Standard Oil Trust, or some mining, 
railroad or other monopoly. No such argument should 
be permitted to stand in the way of experiment with 
government ships of peace as well as ships of war. 

“ In the meantime there should be an increase every- 
where in the number and variety of local experiments 
in co-operation. They will have their failures, as all 
systems and associations of effort have had them, 
through at least 6,000 years ; but they will win in the 
end, or civilization itself will fail.” 


SONG OF THE TRUST. 



HE poem selected as best representing the senti- 
ments of the club was as follows : 


Behold how the envious roll their eyes at the prizes they fail 
to win, 

And groan wdiile the pace they help to set is pushing the 
leaders in ; 

Behold what a lot of dust they raise— what hubbub throughout 
the land — 

When seeing their own ideals filled, they follow and not 
command. 

But little we need to heed their dUvSt so long as its source is 
thus — 

So long as they make their own chief aim the feature they 
curse in us : 

So long as they think and feel and act that the only pursuit 
of man — 

To which all others are side pursuits — is to gobble the most 
he can. 

We are only the fruits of a system built on the common greed 
of man, 

And have nothing to fear from the ones who squirm, yet 
cherish themselves the plan ; 

For we know that a touch of our golden wand will hush the 
noisy to sleep — 


ii8 


THE middle ten 


That the coin of the realm will gather them in, as the salt wnll 
gather the sheep. 

Our guide is — that the Business Age lays sentiment on the 
shelf, 

And we simply lead in the greedy race of every man for him- 
self ; 

We recognize that the greatest rule the ethics of man has 
touched 

Is now our civilization’s boast and is, “Either clutch or be 
clutched. ’ ’ 

And yet, as a rule, do we not pay well for whatever we need 
to buy — 

Whether such be a governor, jury or judge, detective, traitor 
or spy ? 

And even the votes of the common herd — how large they swell 
the amount 

Our expensive political heelers charge in their bills to expense 
account ! 


The Senate, House and Cabinet stuff we often require comes 
high, 

While Legislatures, though cheap themselves, are bothersome 
things to buy ; 

And the writers and pastors, here and there, by whom our 
thrift is praised. 

Have things to be built and trips to take and salaries to be 
raised. T\ t\ 


R D - 8 3 


Think furthermore of the pile it takes to pay for the unripe 
fruits 

Our papers yield us from time to time in the matter of libel 
suits ; 

And think of the handsome sum required to foot the annual 
bill 


THE MIDDLE TEN 


II 


Involved in raiding presumptuous plants we issue orders to 
kill. 

Pass over — but no ; let the list go in — the meanest list of 
them all ; 

For its members never a sale too mean and never a deal too 
small ; 

’Twould please us much if our pay roll lists their names no 
longer could know, 

But like the fellow who grappled the bear, we dare not let 
them go. 

And these are only a paltry few of the items we have to pay 

In harnessing individual greed in an organized modern way ; 

Our wages are good and are promptly paid— to even the sp}'- 
ing bums. 

And our regular dividend— come it must, no matter from 
where it comes. 

It matters not that along the way it fattens where someone 
gropes 

Among the wreckage our work has made, and is left w'ith his 
blasted hopes ; 

Depression, disorder and debt may spread at a touch of our 
cornering thumb. 

But the dividend fixed for our watered stock has nothing to do 
but come. 

Thus turning the screws our grist is ground, and we laugh at 
the noise we hear. 

For the middle classes wdll not unite, and the others w’e need 
not fear ; 

And so long as man thinks little as now of his fellow' worm of 
the dust, 

Ourselves or others will turn the screws and sing the Song of 
the Trust. 























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